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FACSIMILES 

OF THE 

SIGNATURES OF AUTHORS 

IN 

THE TAUCHNITZ EDITION 

PHOTOGRAPHED 

FROM THEIR CORRESPONDENCE 

AND AGREEMENTS 

WITH 

BARON TAUCHNITZ. 
A FRONTISPIECE TO VOLUME 2000. 




Of English Literatiire. 



r 



The folloiving, ivith a z<e)y feio jinavoidable exceptions, 
j^. ?ns a complete list of the contemporary Authors ivho 
have contributed to the Tauchnitz Edition.. 

Where several Facsimiles belong to one and the saine 
person , they are placed together and enclosed between two 
lines. In all such cases the Author is inserted in the 
alphabetical order tender the name by which he first 
appeared in the Tauchnitz Edition. 

The American Aicthors are marked by a * before the 
contijiuous number in the inner margin. 

The date of each signature is given in the outer margin. 







IV 



J^Lm^ 




1873. 



^_A^/^ 



■ 4' /^A-X--^^ 





1875. 



O^^^^^^iy^^y^ c^^i<^ 



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Olc__ 1880. 



J^-^3 -€<^r-^^^^^^^- 




1843. 



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VI 




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4^^^;^^!^^^ 







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c^^' ^ ^cy^c^^^^xMJ'—^^ 


£^./^^/^ ^^^ 


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1862. 



C87I. 



1843. 



1844. 



[868. 



— vni 



1868. 



*2^y-*^/^»^ 




/^^^'^J^^ 



1873- 




1872. 



/S^^ 4 /^^k..^ 



IX 



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[876. 




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*36. 



XI — 




XII 




XIII 




48. 








J^eJiLcju ioTuuT^^i^^LXf 



1872. 



1878. 



XIV 




XV 




XVI 



c87^. ^_^/^^?/H^ Cz(^^^^-^^€::^tL^ 64. 



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1879. 

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872- V^ ¥ i ' I •^•■'^^/ ^ / ^ 68 




872. »^-^''*'^r7^7^^^^^^ /"-y^*^*" ' / '^ ^/^ • 69 





XVII 




Of English Literattite. 



XVIII 



i877. 




XIX 




XX 




i874 



XXI 



]k^ (^/dX^. ^«79. 




94- 



/->/: jC^y/2^^\^ 



1865. 



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1856. 



XXII 



1872. 




1876. 





^^^ ^2^-^^^^^ 



1880. 



dC^C^/Ui^^l^^''ii'-<./Cit^^-i^ 



1872. 



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XXllI 




1853- 



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1859. 



03- 



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105. 




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1872. 



(872. 



XXIV 



i874. 



[872. 






1854. 




1870. 



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1854- 




XXV 



^^^^^ cy^'^'^^^' ,875. 







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1880. 




1871 



XXVIII 



l^%r^t/r^^^^^'i!U«;r 




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XXIX — 



x.\ Titt^o^^C^^ ^Tl^i:?^^'^^ / r^^-tr^^-^.^ I 



870. 



yZ4n/-^^ u7^>Z^?^^^^ 



1866. 



134- 



135- 






875. 



136. 




(_///kJ^ '^^.^ 



1872. 



1872. 



i8s6. 



i866. 




1865. 



t86i 



XXX 



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139. i 



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143- 



144- 



^/fl^A/v^A^/xic.<.^MX^-^^^ ■»»■ 



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^dXi.^ 




1863. 



1876, 



,,6 n(U.tAjL^i^tdL Scocc/z^a'c^i^ ,,,, 



XXXII 




XXXIII 




^t^yf^ 



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,56. CjLj^vk.^ cJy^^ ItJzjgch 



1879. 



0/ English Literature. 



XXXIV 




XXXV — 



62. 




1872. 



1879. 



.63. 



^^^^25:^ 



i854. 



164. 





1877. 



XXXVl — 



1856. i\ (^^^ '^^^v^ JLLKfe^A^v%jL\_ 

( ^ *i66/ 




C67. 



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— XXXVII — 



'^^^^^^^ ^l^--^ d^<L^c^^ ^^*.-0^/^<.^^ ^5c-^^ 



.^L^i^ ,. 



t86i. 



^^5^^^^ 



G- 



1861. 



XXXVIII 



ADDENDA. 

M7's. Argles is the Author of "Molly Bawn." 

Miss Blind is the Editor of Shelley's works. 

Miss Charlotte Bronte wrote under the nom de gtierre 
of Currer Bell. This signature is as an exception not 
from our own correspondence but we are indebted for it 
to Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co. 

The three members of the Buhver-Lytton family who 
have contributed to the Tauchnitz Edition are inserted in 
the alphabetical order imder Bulwer. Sir Henry Lytton 
Bulwer died as Lord Bailing. The present Lord Lytton 
published his early works under the no/n de guerre of 
"Owen Meredith." 

Mrs. Charles is the Author of "Chronicles of the 
Schonberg-Cotta Family." 

Miss Dickens and Miss Hogarth , the Editors of the 
letters of the late Charles Dickens, are added to Mr. 
Dickens, 

A/r. Alex. Dyce was the Editor of our second edition 
of Shakespeare. 

George Ehot was the nom de guerre of Miss Evans. 

Mr. Ferdinand Freiligrath was the Editor of our 
edition of Coleridge. 

Mr. Hamertoji is the Author of "Marmorne." 



XXXIX 



Miss Iza Hardy is the Author of "Not easily 
Jealous." 

Mrs. Houstoun is the Author of "Recommended to 
Mercy." 

Mr. Hueffer is the Editor of Mr, Rossetti's Poems. 

Mrs. Hunt writes under the iwm de guerre of Averil 
Beaumont. 

Mrs. Fanny E. Kingsley, wife of the late Rev. Charles 
Kingsley, is the Editor of the Letters and Memories of his 
Life. 

Major La^urence was the Author of "Guy Livingstone." 

Lord Macaulay''s signature appears first as it was 
before Her Majesty raised him to the peerage, and 
secondly after that dignity was bestowed on him. 

Lo7-d Mahoji published most of his works under this 
name, until he became Lord Stanhope after the death of 
his father. 

Miss Helen Mathers is now Mrs. Henry Reeves. 

Miss Florence Marryat is now Mrs, Francis Lean. 

Miss Dinah Maria Mulock is now Mrs. G, L. Craik. 

Oiiida is the nom de guerre of Miss Louise de la 
Rame. 

Miss Harriet Parr writes under the nom de guerre of 
Holme Lee. 

Mrs. Paul is the Author of "Still Waters." 

Mr. Prior is the Author of "Expiated." 

Miss Piddingtojt is the Author of "The Last of the 
Cavaliers," 

Mrs. RiddeWs noni de guerre is F. G. Trafford. 

Aliss Roberts is the Author of "Mademoiselle Mori." 

Mr. Robinson is the Author of "No Church." 



XL 



Miss Stirling is now Mrs. Mac Galium, 

Miss Thackeray is now Mrs. Ritchie. 

Dr. C. von Tischcndorf was the Editor of the New 
Testament (vol, looo), 

Mark Twain is the nam de guerre of Mr. S. Clemens. 

Dr. C. Vcgel Avas the Editor of vol. 500, **Five 
Centuries of the English Language and Literature. " 

Miss Susan Warner'' s nom de guerre is Wetherell. 

Mr. Charles Wood is the Author of " Buried Alone. " 

Ellen Wood is synonymous with Mrs. Henry Wood. 
This Lady also wrote under the nojn de guerre of Johnny 
Ludlow. 



COLLECTION 

OF 

BRITISH AUTHORS 

TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 

VOL. 2000. 
OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



OF 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 

y 

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA 



WITH A GLANCE AT THE PAST 



BY 

HENRY MORLEY, LL.D. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 
LONDON 



TAUCHNITZ EDITION, VOLUME 2000 



WITH A FRONTISPIECE 



NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
1882 




A14 



TO v 

THEIR MOST GRACIOUS 
MAJESTIES 

KING ALBERT 

AND 

QUEEN CAROLA 

OF SAXONY 
THIS VOLUME 2000 

IS DEDICATED 

AS A TOKEN OF RESPECT AND GRATITUDE 

BY 

THEIR MAJESTIES' 

MOST FAITHFUL AND LOYAL SUBJECT 

TAUCHNITZ. 



In publishing the Two Thousandth vokune of my 
Series, the feeling deepest and strongest in my mind 
is that of gratitude to God for having permitted me 
to carry on my undertaking for the long period of 
forty years, during fifteen of which my eldest son 
Bernhard has supported me with the greatest loyalty 
and devotion. 

Many a great author, whose brilliant name is an 
ornament to the Collection, has during the lapse of 
time passed away; and on this occasion, when I am, 
as it were, placing a memorial stone of my progress, 
the recollection of such losses comes home to me with 
peculiar poignancy. 

But though the dead are gone, their works remain; 
new authors have joined the ranks; and I am encouraged 
to hope that the Tauchnitz Edition will still proceed 
in its old spirit, and continue to fulfil its mission, by 
spreading and strengthening the love for English 
Literature outside of England and her Colonies. 

Leipzig^ December 1881. 



PREFACE. 



When Baron Tauchnitz asked me to write this 
little book, of which the design is his, he also wished 
me to include in it some record of the Literature of 
America. But the stability due to sustained earnest- 
ness of purpose in the publisher, and wide use by the 
public of the series of books now numbering two 
thousand, will give opportunity for other volumes that 
commemorate stages of progress. Baron Tauchnitz 
therefore cordially agreed to a suggestion that the 
kindred Literature of America, though we are proud 
in England to claim closest brotherhood with our 
fellow countrymen of the United States, has a distinct 
interest of its own, large enough for the whole subject 
of another memorial volume, and that an American 
author would best tell the story of its rise and pro- 
gress. 



X PREFACE. 

Let me be permitted to add of the Tauchnitz 
Collection, that I know no English writer who would 
not now be ready to congratulate its founder upon his 
success thus far in joining care for the higher interests 
of Literature with the diffusion of much healthy in- 
tellectual amusement. Writers as well as readers wish 
God Speed to the continuation of his work. 

University College, London, 
November 23, 1881. 

H. M. 



CONTENTS. 



A GLANCE AT THE PAST. 



Page 



CHAPTER I. 
From the Beginning to the Reign of Elizabeth "... i 

CHAPTER n. 

From the Reign of Elizabeth to the Reign of Anne . . 29 

CHAPTER III. 
From the Reign of Anne to the Reign of Victoria . . 76 

IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 

CHAPTER IV. 
Of those who were old at the Beginning of the Reign ; and 

of the Poets, Wordsworth, Southey, Landor . . 113 

CHAPTER V. 
Journalists of the Elder Generation, Essayists and Poets . 154 

CHAPTER VI. 
Of Women who wrote in the Early Pai-t of the Reign . . 176 



XII CONTENTS. 

Page 
CHAPTER VII. 

Of those by whom Cheap Literature was made useful; and 

of the Earlier Life of Thomas Babington Macaulay . 190 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Of Writers who were between Fifty and Sixty Years old at 

the Beginning of the Reign 229 

CHAPTER IX. 
Men of the next Decade of Years 252 

CHAPTER X. 
Of Thomas Carlyle, and of Divines and Wits . . . 294 

CHAPTER XI. 
Onward Battle 333 

CHAPTER XII. 
The best Vigour of the Time ; and what remains of it . 365 



A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

OF 

ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



CHAPTER I. 
FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH. 

Worthy life of a Man has one high aim. It is so 
with the life of a Nation. Everyday's work, no doubt, 
must owe its form to the day's accidents; but within 
the form breathes always the life itself, that changes 
only by advance in knowledge of the path it means 
to tread. There is a single England and a single Ger- 
many, as truly as there is a single Englishman or 
German. They are twin nations, with a strong family 
likeness. Nevertheless they differ as brothers who live 
apart, each with his outward life determined by those 
accidents of position which cause also his individuality 
of thought and character to be more clearly marked. 
It is the purpose of this little book to tell as much as 
it can in a few pages of the spirit of English Litera- 
ture in that part of the reign of Queen Victoria which 

Of EvglUh Literature, I 



2 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

now belongs to History. Literature, of all things upon 
earth the most significant, is no chance feast of scraps, 
it is the best utterance of the mind of a people which 
has its embodiment in deeds set forth by the historian. 
But the present thoughts of a man cannot be fairly 
interpreted without some knowledge of the thoughts 
that led to them. For men and nations, yesterday 
lives with to-day, and travels with to-day into to-mor- 
row. Let us lighten, therefore, an attempt to under- 
stand a little of the present, by a very swift glance at 
the past. 

Before the coming of Teutonic settlers who gave 
England its name, there were Celts in Britain. Each 
of the two branches of the great Celtic stock contri- 
buted to the first peopling, and throughout the land 
national character is more or less tempered by a 
blending in various degrees of Celt with Teuton. 
The highest literature springs out of the hearts that 
are most deeply stirred. A struggle for independence, 
ending in a great defeat at the battle of Gabhra, as- 
signed by tradition to the year 284, gave rise among 
the Gaelic Celts of Erin to their first great outpouring 
of song. 

A like struggle was forced upon the Cymric Celts 
of Britain by incoming of the Teutons. As these 
spread inland from the eastern shore, on which they 
landed, their hold on the soil was contested, and here 
also there was a great defeat of the Celts closing a 
period of intense energy. King Arthur, if he ever 
lived, lived then as a Cymric leader. But echoes of 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 3 

the oldest song tell rather of Urien, a northern chief, 
whose bards were Taliesin, Llywarch the Old, Merd- 
dhin or Merlin, and Aneurin. Aneurin's "Gododin" 
was one long lament for the ruin of the British cause 
in the six days battle of Cattraeth, assigned by tradi- 
tion to the year 570. 

From all points of the mainland opposite the 
eastern shores of England, by a natural process of 
migration, still at work though under milder forms of 
a more civilized society, the Teutonic settlers came. 
To this day the marks are unmistakeable of Scandi- 
navian, Danish, and Frisian ancestry among the na- 
tions of those parts of England that are opposite the 
coasts of Scandinavians, Danes, and Frisians. 

Movements of the more energetic produced fusion 
of kindred settlements with kindred forms of speech. 
The old diversity being still represented by provincial 
dialects, there was shaped a nation with one language 
of its own, which took the name of one of the con- 
stituent tribes, and became thenceforth English. We 
now call that earliest form of English speech First 
English or Anglosaxon. In this language, and as early 
as the seventh century, at some time between the years 
658 and 680, was struck the first note of an English 
Literature. 

Celtic missionaries were, in the north of England, 
bringing Christianity into the homes of the new settlers, 
when a poet known to us as Caedmon joined the re- 
ligious house then formed at Whitby under Abbess 
Hilda. He joined Hilda's community and took his 

I* 



A GLANCE AT THE PAST 



part in the good work by setting to the music of old 
northern heroic song parts of the Bible story used as 
means of quickening a simple faith in God. 

There is another large poem in First English, per- 
haps, in its English form, as old as Caedmon's Para- 
phrase, and in its original form, as a Scandinavian or 
Danish saga, certainly older. In mythical record of the 
deeds of Beowulf this vividly represents the chief cha- 
racters of the old northern life as it was when it began 
to lay foundations of the future strength of England. 

Out of the shaping energies that gave birth to a 
nation, while their impulse was yet fresh, these poems 
came. There were no later utterances of like force 
during the four centuries of Anglosaxon England. 

But the life of those four centuries was in their 
Literature, with a clear voice of its own. From Bede, 
who was born when Csedmon lived and sang, to King 
Alfred who toiled to restore the broken forces of his 
country, and beyond the days of Alfred, the whole 
company of the First English writers laboured with 
one aim. Bede, devoted from childhood to the service 
of God, spent his life in the monastery at Jarrow in 
work and worship. All but the hours of prayer were 
hours of strenuous work for the increase of knowledge, 
and through knowledge of wisdom, among his country- 
men. He crowned his literary life with an endeavour 
to tell faithfully the History of that shaping of England 
which was still in many of its details within living 
memories, within even each day's experience of living 
men. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 5 

Such faithful labour for the spread of knowledge 
as was represented by the work of Bede, made Eng- 
land in the days of Alcuin a source of light even for 
the empire of Charlemagne. Alcuin, who was born 
about the time of the death of Bede, in 735, and who 
was bred from early childhood in the monastery at 
York, where he became librarian and schoolmaster, 
acquired fame as a teacher that caused Charlemagne, 
when he met with him, by chance, in the year 781, to 
draw him to his own court as a helper. It was a 
countryman of Alcuin, whose name suggests that he 
may have had Celtic blood in his veins, John Scotus 
Erigena, who made the first breach in the wall that 
parted theological from other teaching. The aim of 
the early schoolmen was, in one way or another — every 
way leading to frequent censure from the Pope — to be 
at the same time theologians and philosophers, but 
still with little or no question of established dogma. 
The first of the schoolmen was Erigena. With an 
Englishman, or Scot, this attempt at a forward move- 
ment of thought began in the ninth century, and in 
the fourteenth century it ended with an Englishman, 
when William Occam led his followers out of their 
cloisters to the open ground where they breathed freer 
air, dealt boldly with realities of life, and took part, 
as Englishmen should, in the whole forward struggle 
of their day. 

Erigena died when Alfred was king in England; 
and the decay of learning caused by continued in- 
cursions of the Danes and Norsemen, who crossed over 



O A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

for plunder where they could not settle, had become 
now a disorganizing force. Monasteries were the 
schools, the hospitals, the centres of civilization, in 
that early time. The religious feeling made them, by 
constant endowment and gift of treasure, centres also 
of w^ealth. Wealth brought with it temptations, from 
within to indolence and luxury, and from without to 
plunder. There was check, therefore, to the flow of 
knowledge at its source. When Alfred endeavoured 
to revive the monastery schools, Latin had fallen into 
disuse as the living tongue of the republic of letters, 
and one part of his work was the translation into Eng- 
lish of these Latin books which he desired especially 
to keep alive as aids to the intellectual culture of his 
people. 

After Alfred's time, men with less breadth of 
thought sought to continue his work, and chief re- 
liance was placed by Ethelwold and Dunstan upon 
the enforcement of a strict monastic rule. Ethelwold, 
when Bishop of Winchester, had for a chief teacher in 
his diocese one of his old pupils at Abingdon, ^Ifric, 
known as the grammarian. He aided as grammarian 
in the attempt to revive Latin studies, and wrote Ho- 
milies on the days celebrated in the service of the 
church. Long afterwards, when war of creeds divided 
England, the Homilies of -^Ifric were referred to as 
evidences of an uncorrupted form of doctrine in the 
Anglosaxon church. 

An undertone of religious verse in legends of 
saints, dialogues between Soul and Body, mythical 






OF ENGLISH LUERATURE. 7 

properties of animals turned to religious allegory, by 
poets who expressed in quiet strains the feeling of the 
country, ran through the literature of the Anglosaxon 
times. 

The Norman Conquest in the year 1066 brought 
no new race into the land. A difference of social 
conditions had developed differently in England and 
France the common elements of character, and thus, 
after the Norman Conquest, the life of England was 
enriched with new political and social forms, which 
prepared the way for a more definite expression of 
those natural antagonisms of opinion by which a free 
society sifts truth from error. 

It is most good that men should openly and gener- 
ously differ in opinion. All admit that what we have 
we owe to the thought of the wisest in successive 
generations of the past. All admit that their own 
generation has to reconstruct what is outw^orn and 
contribute its own share of labour for the future. But 
each of us is, by bias of mind, so constituted that his 
opinions run more readily upon one of these lines 
than upon the other. One form of mind dwells more 
on the defence and conservation of those institutions 
which have been transmitted to us by the wisdom of 
the past, defers more to established authority, and 
needs more evidence, before it can admit the fitness 
of a change. The other form of mind defers less to 
established authority, and is disposed indeed for a 
bold search after new aids to progress. In every 
matter of opinion, social, civil or religious, argument 



8 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

comes of action on each other by these two natural 
tendencies of thought. The best of our machines is 
useless while at rest, and this diversity of mind among 
us belongs to the working of that loom not made with 
hands on which the raw material of human life is 
spun into a thousand forms of truth. In English 
politics of the Reign of Victoria one of these natural 
tendencies of thought is named Conservative, the other 
Liberal. "Conservative" is a good, defining name; 
but the other name should be "Reformer." 

There had been established the Saxon Chronicle, 
providing for brief annual record of the chief incidents 
in the story of the land. A general habit of keep- 
ing .monastic chronicles, with more or less reference 
to larger incidents of history beyond monastic bounds, 
was introduced into England by the Normans. A 
marked feature in such Chronicles is the quiet way 
in which their writers, who were usually monks drawn 
from the lower or the middle classes , spoke of public 
events; not as they gave occasion for suggestions of 
the pomp of tournament, the grace of fair ladies, 
flutter of flag and sound of trumpet, but as they 
touched the substantial welfare of the people, 
y The twelfth century was a time of vigorous de- 
velopment among the nations. Within a period nearly 
corresponding to the reign of Henry the Second in 
England, there was shaped for Germany the Nibe- 
lungenlied, for Spain the romance of the Cid Cam- 
peador, and out of Flemish national life sprang the 
famous satire of Reinaert, Reynard the Fox. There 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Q 

was a like tendency in the literature of France, and 
in England those were days of the first development 
of Arthurian Romance. Geoffrey of Monmouth matched 
the chronicles of England with a chronicle of the old 
British kings, and crowned the race of British heroes 
with an Arthur upon whom at once imagination fast- 
ened. Thus there welled forth from among the dry 
ground of chronicles the first spring of romance in 
English literature. 

Arthurian romances, brought suddenly into fashion, 
reflected, in bright picturesque forms, at first chiefly 
the animal life of the time. But Walter Map, an 
Archdeacon and a chaplain to Henry IL, put a soul 
into their flesh. From that day to this King Arthur, 
as the mythical romance hero of England, has been 
associated throughout English literature with the deep 
religious feeling of the country. 

In the reign also of Henry the Second, the King's 
contest with Becket stirred the question of the limit 
of the Pope's authority, as it concerned the king. As 
it concerned the people, church authority of every 
form was at the same time brought into question by 
the effects of wealth and luxury upon the church. 

In the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the 
reign of King John, there was revival in England of 
a literature in the language of the land. Layamon, 
who read services of the church near Bewdley, 
turned Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle, with new 
additions to its legend of King Arthur, into a long 
English poem. The "Ormulum," named after brother 



to A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

Orme its writer, endeavoured to give to the people, in 
pleasant rhythmical form, the series of gospels for the 
year, with a short homily upon each, for their instruc- 
tion in religion. "The Land of Cockaygne," — Kitchen 
Land, — was a satire on the corruption of religious 
orders. It painted a monks' Paradise of fleshly delight, 
which was to be reached only by wading for seven years 
in filth of swine. 

Those evils which gave rise to such a satire, and 
the effect they had upon the people, caused Francis 
of Assisi and the Spaniard Dominic to found the 
orders of Franciscans and Dominicans for strenuous 
labour to arrest decay within the Church. The Fran- 
ciscans were to go poor among the poor as brothers, 
helping them to purity of life. The Dominicans were 
banded to maintain the purity of doctrine in the 
Church. Exclusion of books forced the Franciscans 
to look with their own eyes upon nature, and rescued 
them from bondage to conventional opinion. In the 
year 1224 Robert Grosseteste, a learned Suffolk man, 
who afterwards, as Bishop of Lincoln, led opposition 
to the Pope's misuse of Church patronage in England, 
became the first provincial of the Franciscans at Ox- 
ford. Roger Bacon, born in Somersetshire in 12 14, 
with natural impulses that caused him to spend his 
patrimony in pursuit of knowledge by aid of books 
and observation and experiment, became a Franciscan 
friar and, withdrawn from use of books, acquired a 
scientific knowledge far beyond that of his age. The 
results of his life's study were poured out at the bid- 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. I I 

ding of the Pope within eighteen months of the years 
1268 and 1269. 

Dante was then a child of three or four years old. 
The sweet singing of Southern Europe, too much 
separated from the active energies of life, had dwelt 
upon love as a conventional theme, treated by courtly 
poets with more care for the music of language than 
for living truth of thought. The monasteries still 
claimed to be centres of culture, and if the monks, 
vowed to celibacy, might not sing, like other men, of 
love which was accounted the one noble theme, they 
could adapt the fashion to their use, and tell the 
world that when they sang a lady's praise, the lady 
was the Church, the Virgin, or some object of heavenly 
regard. Habitual symbolism among many fathers of 
the Church had helped churchmen with a previous 
training to this use of allegory. The ingenuity of 
double sense added a charm to verse making, and 
taste for allegory spread. Guillaume de Lorris, a 
troubadour in the valley of the Loire, began, during 
the first thirty years of the century, an allegorical 
Romance of the Rose, that he left unfinished; and 
between the years 1270 and 1282, when Dante was 
a boy from five to seventeen years old, Jean de Meung 
finished it. Jean de Meung put so much of the bolder 
spirit of his time into the manner of his finishing, with 
satire against corruption in the Church and in Society, 
that the Romance of the Rose henceforth acquired wide 
fame and influence beyond the borders of its native 
France. 



12 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

By Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio there was de\ 
veloped throughout Europe a new sense of Literature' 
raised into an art. When Dante died in 1321, aged 
fifty six, Petrarch was a youth of seventeen, Boccaccio 
was eight years old, and the four great English writers 
of the fourteenth century were yet unborn. These 
writers, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, John 
Gower, and John Wiclif, seem to have been all born 
within the ten or twelve years following the death of 
Dante. In the year 1349, when the Black Death, the 
greatest of the Pestilences of the Fourteenth Century, 
spread into England, Chaucer, Gower, Wiclif, and 
Langland were young men; Petrarch was about forty- 
five — his Laura was among the victims of that plague 
■ — and Boccaccio thirty six years old. 

These pestilences meant that although Literature 
was advancing, there was no advance whatever to- 
wards knowledge of the laws of health. Famine as 
usual preceded pestilence. In Florence, in April 1347, 
ninety four thousand twelve-ounce loaves of bread 
were daily given to the poor to meet the urgent need. 
Children were dying of hunger in their mothers' 
arms. Plague spreading from the East was already 
in Cyprus, Sicily, Marseilles and some of the Italian 
seaport towns. In January 1348 it broke upon 
Avignon, where the Rhone was consecrated by the 
Pope that bodies might be thrown into it. In one 
burial ground in London fifty thousand corpses of 'the 
plague stricken are said to have been placed in 
layers in large pits. We do not trust these numbers, 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. I 3 

but trust the impression that they give. It is said 
that by the Black Death Europe lost twenty five mil- 
lion of her inhabitants. Into the crowd of the plague 
stricken at the Hotel Dieu, when the deaths were five 
hundred a day, high hearted women entered as Sisters 
of Charity; and as they died at their posts, there was 
never a want of others to come in and take their 
places. Merchants, struck with terror, offered their 
wealth to the church. The deaths of owners of estates 
brought wealth to the religious houses, and made 
lawyers busy. But above all, the Plague believed to 
be a scourge for sin, was looked upon as God's call 
to repentance. Another sweep of pestilence, again 
preceded by famine, crossed England in 1360, another 
in 1373, another in 1382. It was said that of the 
plague of 1349 ^^^ po^i" were the chief victims, but 
that the plague of 1360 struck especially the rich. It 
is from this plague that one of the great songs of 
England in the Fourteenth Century, Langland's Vision 
of Piers Plowman, had its origin. y 

William Langland was associated, although not as 
ordained priest, with the service of the Church; he 
was well read; and he was a religious poet who felt 
deeply the griefs of the people. In the old unrhymed 
alliterative measure, then still familiar to the many, 
Langland provided the wandering reciters of song and 
tale at fairs and festivals and by the wayside, wherever 
there was large resort of men, with a great allegory 
of the search after a higher life. This was ''the 
Vision of Piers Plowman," in which Piers the Plow- 



14 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

man , first appearing as one with the poor men of the 
earth, becomes identified with Christ himself. The 
pestilences that to Langland seemed to be God's warn- 
ings against sin, spoke through his poem with a deeply 
human voice of sympathy. He clothed the seven sins 
in homely shapes of a life familiar to the people, 
showed them repentant, sent them forth in search of 
the better life that would bring better days to Eng- 
land, and he taught that Christ in the person of 
Piers Plowman brought pardon from God to those who 
should do well. 

What Langland sought in his own way, John 
Wiclif also battled for. Langland was not a follower 
of Wiclif. They were men of like age and of like 
aim, with energies that had been stirred by the same 
social conditions; fellow workers, each with his own 
well marked individuality. In Wiclif, as in others, 
the first efforts at reformation of the Church touched 
rather discipline than doctrine. But the end sought 
by reformation of the teachers was the better guidance 
of the taught, the lifting of the people out of brutish 
life. To more than one man, at this time, the con- 
viction came that the Bible speaking to the people 
with its own full voice in their own tongue would be 
the best of guides. Work of translation, begun here 
and there, was shared and organized by Wiclif so 
effectually that four years before his death he and his 
fellow labourers had completed a translation of the 
Bible into English. 

Energy of thought in the Fourteenth Century struck 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. I 5 

with especial force upon the Papacy after the removal 
of the Popes to Avignon in 1309. A Pope who was 
dependent on the King of France could not be ac- 
cepted as the master of the King of England. He 
was unwelcome to Englishmen in days when the per- 
sonal ambitions of our Kings put enmity between the 
French and English. The seventy years of a Papal 
Court at Avignon were immediately followed by forty 
years of a schism in the Papacy. Griefs of the un- 
taught poor, famine that was forerunner of another 
pestilence, grinding taxation for wars then alike un- 
successful and unjust, led in England to the Jack Straw 
rebellion of 1381. The dibcords of that year caused 
Chaucer's friend John Gower, a Kentish gentleman of 
good estate, to write in Latm his best poem, "Vox 
Clamantis" the Voice of one Crying. Social miseries, 
he argued, do not come by chance, but are results of 
wrong. Of the ignorant mob he felt only that, be- 
cause of its ignorance, it must be kept in subjection 
by superior force. He went through all the orders of 
society from Pope to ploughman, to point out the mis- 
deeds of each; and he set out upon his work with a 
prayer that summed up what should be the aim of 
every English writer: "Let my verse not be turgid, let 
there be in it no word of untruth; may each word 
answer to the thing it speaks of pleasantly and fitly, 
may I flatter in it no one, and seek in it no praise 
above the praise of God. Give me that there shall be 
less vice and more virtue for my speaking." But the 
one form of education by which Gower and all his 



1 6 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

contemporaries sought to raise the people, was onlj 
attainable through reformation of the clergy. The onl] 
education dwelt upon as means of fixing the unstabl 
multitude, and making it into the strong foundation of 
a happy commonwealth, was that which is given ta 
his people by the worthy spiritual guide. The desire 
was to realize religion; to humanize all lives by bring- 
ing them into accord with the pure Christian ideal. 
The first condition of a higher culture was repair of 
the broken plough. In the Fourteenth Century, there- 
fore, and throughout the Fifteenth and Sixteenth, there 
was earnest labour for the Reformation of the Church. 
>- The two greatest English poets, Chaucer and 
Shakespeare, taught only through images of life. 
Towards the close of the Fourteenth Century, Gower 
in his English poem, the "Confessio Amantis," set a 
collection of tales in a light frame work. He soj 
arranged them in eight books that they were seven 
distinct volleys of shot against the seven deadly sins, 
and one against misuse of royal power. When Chaucer 
also followed the example set by Boccaccio's "De- 
cameron," his tales were as far as Shakespeare's plays 
from any profession of didactic purpose. But like 
Shakespeare, Chaucer used the highest gifts of genius 
so that he might teach while he delighted. Nobody ' 
who has read Chaucer through, or who has fairly read 
through only the Canterbury Tales, can look upon 
Chaucer as an animal poet. No man before Shake- 
speare dwelt as Chaucer dwelt upon the beauty of 
a perfect womanhood, the daisy was for him its 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. T 7 

emblem, with its supposed power to heal imvard 
bruises, its modest beauty, its heart of gold, and its 
white crown of innocence. He is not less deeply be- 
cause unaffectedly religious. His absolute kindliness 
made part of his perception of the highest truth, and 
it increased greatly the power of his teaching. 

Lydgate and Occleve at the beginning of the Fif- 
teenth Century maintained, as far as they had strength, 
the poet's office, to delight and teach. But their days 
were clouded with political confusion. There is nothing 
in wars between families for the succession to a throne, 
or in wars of invasion for aggrandizement of the in- 
vader, that can set a people singing, or touch to the 
quick that better part of life which speaks through a 
true Literature. It is only war of minds, and bodies 
too if need be, for the truth, for liberty, for something 
that true men will rather die than lose, which fetches 
out the earnest voice of life. The Lowland Scot, most - 
English of the English, who was able to say, thus far 
and no farther, to invasions of the Norman kings, did 
not want poets at a time when elsewhere English 
Literature was among the victims of ignoble strife. 
In Chaucer's latter time John Barbour, Archdeacon of 
Aberdeen, had blended many a touch of wisdom with a 
strain of liberty in his metrical Life of Robert Bruce, 
who died not fifty years before. The poem was half 
written in 1375. In the next century Blind Harry, 
a wandering minstrel, with less art though with more 
appearance of art in the variety of measures, sang the 
romance of Wallace, When tales of Wallace were 

0/ English Liierattife. 2 



I 8 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

being thus chanted among the Scots, Robert Henrysor 
in 1462, became a graduate of the newly founde< 
University of Glasgow. Robert Henryson, who was 
dead in 1508, wrote in his "Robin and Makyn" the' 
first pastoral in English Literature. He moralized 
fables in verse with a shrewd Scottish humour. He 
wrote an earnest sequel to Chaucer's "Troilus and 
Cressida," and he left to us a small body of thought- 
ful and religious poetry. Before he passed away 
there had begun the great development of Scottish 
song that yielded in William Dunbar the next poet of 
great mark after Chaucer, and in Sir David Lindsay 
of the Mount the Scottish Poet of the Reformation. 

It is noticeable, however, that in the middle of 
the Fifteenth Century, when England was bleeding 
from the wounds of Civil war, and the voice of her 
Literature was almost silenced, there were two writers 
who showed that the pulse of the nation had not 
stopped. Sir John Fortescue, who had been Henry the 
Sixth's Chief Justice and fought at Towton, went into 
exile with his master. Although himself cast out from 
a country where all seemed to be discord, he com- 
pared in France, for the instruction of the young 
Prince who might afterwards be king of England, the 
absolutist forms of the French monarchy with the 
limitations of the power of the king that had grown 
with the growth of English law. Days even of weak- 
ness and disorder had been made occasions for con- 
firming and extending those constitutional rights upon 
which Fortescue dwelt. The other writer through 



OF KNGUSTT LITERATURE. I 9 

' >m we feci that, in those days of civil war, however 
>d might flow, the heart of England was still 

riling, is Reginald Pecock. The followers of Wiclif, 
viiown as Lollards, though without competent leaders, 
kvere battling still for a reformed Church. Forerun- 
ners of the later Puritans, they desired the clergy to 
look only to the Bible, to build up the church by 
founding it and all its ordinances upon scripture only 
as the Word of God, and to avoid human tradition 
and vain ceremonies that had, for many, turned 
religion into superstition. The Bishops were blamed 
for want of diligence in preaching; wealth of the 
clergy was condemned, and their encouragement of 
war, of oaths, of pilgrimages to the shrines of saints, 
invocation of saints, veneration of relics and of images, 
church ornaments and bells and banners. Reginald 
Pecock, a busy writer and a Welshman, who became, 
in the middle of the Fifteenth Century, Bishop of 
Chichester, produced in English a large book of argu- 
ment with the Bible Men called "the Repressor of 
Over Much Blaming of the Clergy." He came down 
among the people and in their own tongue sought by 
reason to convince them of what he believed to be their 
errors. He opposed constant appeal to the Bible on 
indifferent matters of Church discipline because God 
had given to men Reason to determine such things for 
themselves. Scripture, he said, was designed for 
revelation to man of that which was beyond and 
above reason. Both were gifts from the same source 
of all truth; Reason and Faith, therefore, never really 



20 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

contradict each other. First principles on which to 
base the later doctrines of Religious Liberty were in 
the writings of this Bishop, whom the temporal and \ 
spiritual Lords of his own day immured for life in 
Thorney Abbey. They condemned him as one who, 
by preferring Reason to Authority in dealing with the 
people, had offered to break down the strongest 
buttress of the Church. 

But throughout Europe in the Fifteenth Century 
there was a gathering of forces that gave impulse to 
the forward struggle. The fall of Constantinople in 
May 1453 scattered the learned Greeks, who taught 
abroad the ancient literature of their country and in- 
troduced Greek studies into Europe. Plato then came 
in aid of the battle against sensuality within the Church. 
Two years after the fall of Constantinople Gutenberg 
and Faust completed the first printed book. The sack 
of Mayence, in 1462, by its Archbishop Adolphus, 
dispersed the printers, and with them the secrets of 
their craft. Printing presses then were established in 
some of the chief cities of Europe. When William 
Caxton introduced the art of printing into England, 
and settled among the hand copyists at Westminster, 
he seemed only to be cheapening a luxury. His first 
publications, in and after the year 1474, were such as 
the rich men, who alone could afford books, might be 
disposed to buy. But it was not long before full use 
was found for the new means of carrying on that con- 
flict of thought by which society moves forward to the 
higher life that even now is attained only by a few. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 21 

Besides these forces there came also in aid of the new- 
birth of intellectual energy in Europe, the discovery 
of the New World. Columbus went to sea about the ' 
time when the printers of Mayence were first scattered. 

While men's imaginations were still being embold- 
ened by these great discoveries, Sir Thomas More 
wrote his "Utopia." Somewhere about the New World 
was the Island of Utopia— Nusquama— Nowhere— dis- 
covered by one of the voyagers whom Amerigo Vespucci 
left behind, and whom More feigned that he had met 
at Antwerp. Wretched wars of ambition made in 
these days the chief business of the chief sovereigns 
of Europe. More, writing part of his little book in 
Brussels while a fellow lodger with his friend Erasmus, 
set forth under a transparent veil his condemnation of 
political and social evils in the England of his day, 
with playful aids to the perception of what a civilized 
community might be. 

On the 31st of October 15 17, Martin Luther affixed 
to the church door at Wittenberg his 95 theses against 
Indulgences. Wiclif and Huss were dead, but there 
remained the cause they battled for. Luther was turned 
to rebellion against the Pope's authority by the Pope's 
rebellion against Reason and Scripture. The papal 
legate Cajetan gave up attempt to bring Luther back 
into the state of passive obedience, and said, "I will 
not speak with the beast again; he has deep eyes, and 
his head is full of speculation." Luther's translation 
of the Bible into German set William Tyndale upon 
the like work in England. Tyndale's New Testament 



21 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

was printed at Cologne and Worms in 1525, at Ant 
werp in 1526, and smuggled into England, with hij 
tracts in aid of Church Reform. In 1536 Tyndal( 
was strangled and burnt at Antwerp. His last words' 
were: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" In 
1537 Miles Coverdale produced the first complete 
translation of the Bible into English, and it was ad- 
mitted into England. Foundations of the future church . 
establishment in England were then being laid. In; 
May 1533, a few months after his private marriage 
with Anne Boleyn King Henry VIII. was divorced from 
Katherine of Arragon. Their daughter Mary, after- 
wards Queen Mary of England, was then seventeen 
years old. In the following September Elizabeth was 
born. Henry VIII. having quarrelled with Rome over 
the personal question of his divorce from Katherine, 
in November 1534 the English Parliament made the 
King absolute master of the Church of England. In 
1535, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, when an old 
man of 80, was beheaded because he could not take 
oath of assent to the king's new position in the Eng- 
lish Church. Fisher was beheaded on the 2 2d of 
June, and Sir Thomas More, for a like reason, on the 
6th of July. In the same year Hugh Latimer was 
made Bishop of Worcester. Coverdale's Bible was 
then in print, but it was dedicated to the king's " most 
dearest just wife Anne," and as Anne Boleyn was be- 
headed in May 1536, before these Bibles had been 
issued', the issue was delayed for the removal of 
the dedication. In 1537 the king's next wife, Jane 



OF ENr.TJSH LITERATURE. 2^ 

Seymour, died after the birth of her son Edward. 
While attempts were being made to secure an English 
version of the Bible free from the objection laid against 
Tyndale's of Lutheranism in the manner of translation, 
the English Church Reformers were still active in 
controversy. In 1539 — the year also of Thomas Crom- 
well's final act for the dissolution of Abbeys — the king, 
as Head of the Church, declared for all the practices 
against which objection was most frequent. The king's 
"Act abolishing Diversity of Opinion" caused Latimer 
to resign his bishopric and he w^as silenced during the 
rest of Henry VIIFs reign. 

Meanwhile upon the continent the zeal of Calvin 
had been added to the zeal of Luther. On the 
20th of November 1541 Calvin's Ecclesiastical and 
Moral Code established at Geneva what was called 
"the Yoke of Christ." There was free use of authority 
to enforce doctrine and discipline, there as elsewhere. 
The reading of romances was forbidden. Three children 
were officially punished for stopping outside the church 
to eat cakes after service had begun. In 1568 a child 
was beheaded for having struck her parents. A lad 
of sixteen was sentenced to death for only threatening 
to strike his mother. The forms of earnestness in this 
and other controversies could in no man lie wholly 
outside the civilization of his time. 

On the 28th of January 1547 King Henry VIIL 
died, only a few days after he had signed the death 
warrant of one of the best poets of his reign, Henry 
Howard, Earl of Surrey. Though the Earl of Surrey 



24 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

had never been himself in Italy he had joined his 
elder friend Sir Thomas Wyatt in adapting Italian and 
French verse measures to the English tongue. Through 
them the sonnet found its way into English Literature, 
and it was the Earl of Surrey who by translating two 
books of Vergil's ^neid into a form of blank verse 
then being tried in Italy, brought into English Litera- 
ture the use, at first only a slight use, of a measure 
that was developed afterwards by the genius of Shake- 
speare and Milton into the noblest instrument for the 
expression of poetic thought. In Henry the Eighth's 
reign Italian influence, which, in the days of Chaucer, 
had been influence only of great writers on great writers, 
became an influence of court upon court, a spread of 
fashions from the source of fashion. 

The earnest undertone of English thought was in 
the fancies of the courtly poets who in the latter part 
of Henry the Eighth's reign followed the Italian fashions. 
Italians claimed all the great Latin poets as their an- 
cestors; in Italy the new foundations also of Modern 
Literature had been laid by Dante, Petrarch, and 
Boccaccio. The free spirit from which that new power 
came was being enfeebled by the rise of tyrannies. 
But the little tyrants played at literature, wrote verse, 
and gladly directed thoughts of eager minds from ques- 
tions of political right to debate over the sonnets of 
Petrarch. It became a courtly fashion to write verse, 
and strain for ingenious daintiness of speech, known 
in England as the Euphuism of the Elizabethan time. 
Who could deny the right of Italy to lead Europe in 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 2^ 

Art and Literature? Nowhere else in the world was 
the temper of the artist so distinctly to be found. 
Ariosto produced his Orlando in 1515, within Henry 
the Eighth's reign, and died in 1533, the year of the 
king's divorce from Katherine. Among the universities 
and courts of Italy there was in those days the birth 
of the modern drama. Pastoral poetry was finding a 
new voice. Scholarship was active. The year of 
Luther's birth was the year also of the birth of 
Raffaelle, and Ariosto and Michael Angelo were born 
within one half year of 1 474-7 5. Some of the verses writ- 
ten in accordance with Italian usage by noblemen and 
gentlemen of the days of Henry the Eighth, Edward VI. 
and Queen Maiy were collected, together with the poems 
of the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, into a 
book commonly known as Tottel's Miscellany. It was 
published a few months before Elizabeth became 
Queen. The tone of these poems, although they can 
be playful, is never frivolous. The voice even of 
courtly English song, in those days of constant struggle 
over essentials of the higher life, accords with the spirit 
of a little poem by Lord Vaux, one of the number of 
the courtly singers: 

"Our wealth leaves us at death, our kinsmen at the grave, 
But virtues of the mind unto the heavens with us we have. 
Wherefore, for virtue's sake, I can be Avell content 
The sweetest time of all my life to deem in thinking spent." 

With the advance of scholarship came also new 
thought upon the principles of education. At the end 
of the Fifteenth Century, Grocyn and Linacre had first 



26 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

taught Greek at Oxford. Among the Greek scholars 
at Oxford was John Colet, son of a rich citizen of 
London. He became in 1 505 Dean of St. Paul's, and 
began in 15 10 the spending of his large private 
fortune on the founding of St. Paul's School. Sir 
Thomas Elyot, a Suffolk gentleman, who served 
Henry VIII. as Ambassador, wrote both upon Educa- 
tion and upon Management of Health. His little book 
called "the Castle of Health," written with apology 
to the doctors for entering their domain, curiously 
applies the medical knowledge he had picked up 
from books then of authority to discussion of food 
and diet, and throws light upon the social customs of 
the day. It was published in 1533, two years later 
than his book called "the Governour," the most en- 
lightened treatise on the education proper for a gen- 
tleman which had appeared up to that time in Eng- 
lish Literature. Records of the foundations of public 
schools bear, indeed, clear witness to the interest in 
education that formed part of the new birth of ener- 
getic thought. 

Only eight public schools were founded before 
the reign of Henry VI., one of them being Winchester 
College. In the reign of Henry VI., in 1441, Eton 
was founded. In the same reign three other schools 
were established, one of them being the City of 
London School, which was revived in 1834. ^^ the 
reign of Edward IV. four schools were founded; under 
Edward V. none. Under Richard III. there was one; 
under Henry VII. there were twelve; but under 



OF ENGLISH IJTERATURE. 2/ 

Henry VIII. the number of new school foundations was 
no less than forty nine. The work went on with in- 
creased energy during the short reign of Edward VI. 
when forty four more schools were founded; Christ's 
Hospital being one of them. Twelve schools were 
founded in the reign of Mary (there were not more 
during the whole of the long reign of George III.), 
and one hundred and fifteen under Elizabeth, including 
Westminster, Merchant Taylors', and Rugby. Charter- 
house was among the forty-eight schools founded in 
the reign of James I. Of the whole number of public 
schools founded from the days of King Alfred down 
to the present day, one half date from some year 
within the period from the accession of Henry VIII. 
to the death of Elizabeth. 

After the death of Henry VIII. there was a child 
king of ten years old in the hands of the Church Re- 
formers, who were energetic in securing the predomi- 
nance of their opinion. Latimer, called into activity, 
preached before Edward VI. and before the court and 
people, with direct zeal against all unreformed abuses, 
not without condemnation of the neglect of the plough 
in God's field by the prelates. The Devil, he said, is 
the busiest prelate in England, "ye shall never find 
him idle, I warrant you." Edward's short reign, from 
1547 to 1553, was followed by the reign of his elder 
sister, Queen Katherine's daughter, Mary. By her the 
work of the reformers was overthrown, the new doctrines 
and service books were deprived of authority, strong 
efforts were made to restore the English Church to the 



28 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

communion of Rome, and on the i6th of October, 1555, 
Latimer was among those who were burnt for their 
opinions. On the 17th of November 1558 Queen Mary 
died and her younger sister EUzabeth, Anne Boleyn's 
daughter, then twenty-five years old, became Queen of 
England. 



OF ENGLISTT LITERATURE. 2g 



CHAPTER IT. 

FROi\r THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH TO THE REIGN OF ANNE. 

The whole population of England in the earlier 
years of Elizabeth's reign was below five million, and 
burning questions of the day caused wide divisions 
among these. If the best intellect among the people 
was on the side of Reformation in the Church, more 
than half of them were inclined to stand in the old 
ways. Among the Reformers there was subdivision. 
John Hooper, who was burnt under Mary, had been 
sent to prison under Edward by way of conquering 
his strong objection to be made a Bishop if, as 
Bishop, he must wear the Bishop's robes. The con- 
troversy upon vestments that has never died out of the 
English Church of the Reformation, arose, like most 
other occasions of debate within its pale, out of the way 
in which the Reformation was established. On the 
continent the follow^ers of Luther and Calvin drew to 
themselves, where they prevailed, prince and peasant. 
They had no difficulty in putting aside the whole cere- 
monial of Roman worship, and establishing the severe 
simplicity of a Church based upon no authority but 
that of Scripture. In England, when the Pope was set 
aside the King replaced him, and opinions or usages 
ordained by authority, were imposed, with frequent 



30 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

abrupt change, upon a country but half willing to 
accept them. Edward's advisers had been afraid to 
stir violence of opposition by conspicuous change in 
the outward appearance of church worship. The young 
queen put in the place of Cardinal Pole, Matthew Parker 
as her first Archbishop of Canterbury, and with his 
help set about her work of establishing the Reforma- 
tion in the Church of which she meant to be the 
Head. Matthew Parker was a pureminded religious 
man, and a good student of the past. The Queen's 
policy, and the Archbishop's, was to find a middle 
way between the Roman Catholics and those re- 
formers against whom Pecock of old had reasoned, 
the Bible men, who in Elizabeth's time were first 
called Precisians or Puritans. 

Elizabeth felt strongly the difficulty caused by 
discords among her people. Spain, richer by discovery 
of the New World, was a strong combatant for Rome, 
and little England, divided within itself, had from 
Spain certainly, perhaps from Spain and France to- 
gether, an attack to face. Her desire for union among 
her subjects was often expressed. It was this feeling 
partly that caused her at the beginning of her reign 
to give such emphasis to the chance production of the 
■^ first tragedy written in English, "Gorboduc", or 
"Ferrex and Porrex", that its success opened the way 
to the development of the Elizabethan drama. The 
story taken by its young writers, Thomas Sackville and 
Thomas Norton, who produced it as an entertainment 
for Grand Christmas at the Inner Temple in 1561, 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 3 I 

was unquestionably chosen for expression of a thought 
dominant at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. The 
first of the dumbshows before the acts, set forth the 
fable of the bundle of sticks which being divided 
were easily broken, but when bound together withstood 
all force from without. When the queen heard of 
this play, she commanded that it should be acted 
again before herself and her court; and it was so 
acted, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, upon a 
great decorated scaffold in the Queen's hall in West- 
minster, on the 1 8th of January, 1562 (new style). 
That was the birthday of the English drama. 

The first English comedy had, indeed, been pro- 
duced by Nicholas Udall, the headmaster of Eton in 
Henry the Eighth's reign, between the years 1534 and 
1 54 1, when he made a free adaptation into English 
of the "Miles Gloriosus" of Plautus as "Ralph Roister "^ 
Doister," instead of giving his boys, as usual, a Latin 
play to act. But there was nothing in the conditions 
under which that comedy was produced to cause wide 
imitation. It was otherwise with Gorboduc, produced 
in London before a large audience of cultivated men 
trained in the Universities, and emphasized by the 
Queen's special command for its repetition at West- 
minster. The Queen herself from that time regularly 
included plays written in English among court enter- 
tainments, and they were set forth, as masques had 
been, with some scenery. On the public stages, with- 
out scenery, entertaining stories of all kinds were freely 
dramatised and shown in action. 



$2 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

The delight in plays spread, but for a long time 
the plays were, with few exceptions, of but little 
literary worth. For the next five and twenty years 
there was no great rise of the English drama. At 
court John Lyly produced daintily ingenious pieces, clas- 
sical and mythological, addressed only to cultivated 
audiences, George Peele displayed in a court-play the 
grace of his genius, but on the whole, it may be said 
that from the year 156 1-2, when Gorboduc was pro- 
duced, to the year 1586, when it is probable that 
Shakespeare came to London at the age of twenty 
two, few plays of much literary value were produced. 
When William Shakespeare, eldest son of John Shake- 
speare, glover, of Stratford upon Avon, left his native 
town to try his fortunes in London, his father was a 
broken man, who had been struggling with adversity 
for the last eight years. William Shakespeare, born 
on the 23d of April 1564, had married Anne Hathaway 
towards the close of 1582. A daughter Susanna was 
born in 1583, and there were twins, Hamnet and 
Judith, in 1585. In some way he must have been 
endeavouring at Stratford to support his wife and his 
three babies, when it occurred to him that he might 
earn more in London if he joined the players. He 
came as an unknown youth out of Warwickshire, and 
though born to become the world's greatest poet, there 
were six years of patient industry among the players, 
prentice years they may be called, during which he 
was only learning his art and finding his way to some 
little recognition of his powers. But those were the 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. ^^ 

first six years of a vigorous development of the Eliza- 
bethan drama. In 1586 John Lyly's age was only ^^, 
Peele was of about the same age, Thomas Lodge per- 
haps 28, Robert Greene, Henry Chettle and Thomas 
Kyd were young men of seven and twenty. Chris- 
topher Marlowe, a shoemaker's son who had been 
sent to Cambridge, foremost among them all in genius, 
broke into fame with his Tamburlaine at the time 
when Shakespeare joined the theatres, and he also 
w\as then but a young man of twenty two or twenty 
three. During the six years when Shakespeare was 
learning his art, Marlowe was running through his 
brilliant career, and with Lodge, Peele, Greene and 
others was producing a poetic drama, purely Eliza- 
bethan. At the end of those six years, in 1592, 
Shakespeare had produced little or nothing beyond 
such recasting of the plays of other writers as we 
have in the three parts of King Henry VL Marlowe 
was killed in a brawl in 1593. During the six years 
from Greene's death to the year 1598, Shakespeare was 
putting forth his power, and there was no dramatist 
of mark to divide attention with him. That was his 
harvest time. Within that time he was producing 
about two plays a year. A list of twelve plays is 
given in a book of the year 1598 — Meres's "Palladis 
Tamia" — that bears witness to the pre-eminence he 
had by that time attained. He was then thirty four 
years old, and in the preceding year had bought 
"New Place," one of the best houses in his native 
town. There remained five years of Elizabethan 

0/ English Literature. 3 



3'4 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

Drama before the death of Elizabeth. In these years 
Shakespeare continued his successes. But during 
these last five years of the reign a group of younger | 
dramatists became active. Ben Jonson's earliest 
comedy, "Every Man in His Humour," was produced in 
its current form in 1598. Thomas Dekker, John Mar- 
ston, Thomas Heywood also began writing in the la^ 
years of Elizabeth, and while Shakespeare was still 
writing, and rising in power, the English Drama 
reached its highest ground during the first ten or 
twelve years of the reign of James the First. Ben 
Jonson was then at his best, Beaumont and Fletcher 
joined the company of writers. Ford, Massinger, Mar- 
ston and others were then also writing. Causes of 
decay were already at work, but certainly the full 
ripeness of the English drama was in those first years 
of the reign of James the First. 

We turn back to Elizabeth's endeavour to secure 
peace for her Church by taking a middle way be- 
tween the strife of opposite opinions. Archbishop 
Parker died in 1575 and was succeeded in his see of 
Canterbury by Edmund Grindal Archbishop of York. 
Grindal was in agreement with those Church reformers 
who laid stress upon study of the Bible, and faithful 
exposition of it by the clergy. He encouraged meet- 
ings of the clergy known as Prophesyings for debate 
upon difficulties. The queen held that if every 
minister considered it his duty to study the Bible for 
himself and express in sermons his personal opinions 
to his people, the issue of this could only be a splitting 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 35 

of the church into more forms of various opinion than 
there were already. She commanded Grindal to sup- 
press the prophesyings, and to discourage independent 
preaching. She had adopted in 1559 the "Book of 
Homilies" issued in Edward the Sixth's reign, and 
added to this in 1563 a second Book of Homilies. 
f Here, she thought, were sermons enough; and if these 
were generally preached there would be throughout 
the country one harmonious body of instruction from 
the pulpits. Grindal^ could not obey the Queen's com- 
mand to restrain his clergy in their search into the 
Scriptures. Therefore in 1577 he fell into disgrace. 
He was restrained from exercise of the duties of his 
office, and was, until his death in July, 1583, Arch- 
bishop only in name. 

In 1577 when Grindal fell into disgrace, Edmund 
Spenser was a young man of about four-and-twenty; 
he had proceeded to his M. A. degree at Cambridge 
the year before, and was then possibly a tutor in the 
North of England. In 1579 Spenser was in London, 
employed by the Earl of Leicester, the friend also of 
Leicester's nephew, Philip Sidney, who was of like age 
and in many respects like minded with himself. In 
that year Spenser published his first little book of 
verse, "the Shepherd's Calendar," and in it he not 
only followed the French poet Clement Marot in mak- 
ing pastoral eclogues speak desire for a pure church 
and unworldly ministers, but in doing so he clearly 
took his stand by the disgraced Archbishop Grindal. 
It was a characteristic opening to Spenser's literary 

3* 



3 6 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

life. No man ever set thought to sweeter music, and 
there are some who are content with a mere enjoy- 
ment of the outward charm of Spenser's manner, as if 
that were all. But Spenser was the Elizabethan 
Milton, Puritan like Milton with no narrow zeal against 
the innocent delights of life, but with grand yearning 
for the victory of man over all that opposed his main- 
tenance of a pure soul obedient to God in a pure body 
obedient to the laws of Nature. Shakespeare was 
universal poet. He saw through the accidents of life 
to its essentials. But the accidents of his time are 
never out of Spenser's verse. He is a combatant poet. 
In his Faerie Queene, never completed though he 
was at work on it for more than fourteen years, 
he used a form of romance in which his time de- 
lighted, to show man through all his powers for good 
battling his way heavenward. Aid of divine grace 
the poet represented, in the eighth canto of each book, 
by the intervention of Prince Arthur with his diamond 
shield. But while "the Faerie Queene" might be 
read simply as a spiritual allegory based on Christian 
doctrine, alike applicable to all times, the general 
allegory is expressed through constant indication of 
the particular battles of the poet's own day. But the 
strife it tells of, with its aim unchanged whatever the 
shifting scenery of conflict, lasts through all genera- 
tions till we reach the crowning race of man. The 
poet sought to put his genius to the highest use. 
/^Amusers of a day the day rewards, and their reward 
vends with the day. Only the helpers live. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 37 

Spenser was a young child when John Knox re- 
turned from Geneva to Scotland, and prospered so well 
in his work that, on the 17th of August 1560, the 
Estates of Scotland embodied his opinions in a Con- 
fession of Faith for the Scottish Church. The Scottish 
Reformation was established in accordance with the 
view of those who preferred church government by 
Presbyters and Elders to what they looked upon as 
the less scriptural rule of Bishops. The Puritan view 
that prevailed in Scotland was in England also very 
strongly represented. In the third year of Elizabeth's 
reign, when it was moved in Convocation of the Church 
that Saints' Days should be abolished; that in common 
prayer the minister should turn^ his face to the people; 
that the sign of the cross should not be used in 
baptism; that kneeling at the sacrament should be 
left to the discretion of the minister; that organs 
should be removed; and that it should suffice if the 
minister wore the surplice once, provided that he 
ministered in a comely garment, there was a large 
majority of members present, including Dean Nowell, 
the author of the Church Catechism still in use, who 
voted for these concessions. The numbers were fifty- 
three to thirty-one, but proxies changed the balance 
of the votes and gave a majority of one against the 
Puritans. Of eighty-five editions of the English Bible 
published in Elizabeth's reign, sixty were of the 
Geneva version, preferred by the Puritans. The fierce 
spirit of conflict with Rome was not wanting in its 
preface, nor indeed were Roman Catholics free in 



38 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

Elizabeth's reign from cruel persecution, even to torture 
and death. But the fierceness, though it might breathe 
desire to hew Agag in pieces before the Lord, was 
chiefly spent in spiritual contest with a cruel tyranny. 
In 1567 there was established the Council of Blood 
in the Netherlands; and in February 1568, all the in- 
habitants of the Netherlands were condemned to death, 
by sentence of the Inquisition, except a few who were 
named. In a letter to Philip, Alva estimated at 800 
the executions in Passion wxek. In the following year 
Edmund Spenser, then passing from school to College, 
contributed to a religious book published by a refugee 
from the Low Countries. In 1572 there was in France 
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Spenser was then 
a youth of about nineteen, and young Philip Sidney 
was in Paris at the time. In 1573 there was the siege 
of Haarlem, with 300 women among the defenders of 
the town. At Haarlem there was a treacherous 
slaughter of two or three thousand; three hundred 
were tied back to back and drowned in the lake. 
Alva, recalled by his own wish in December, boasted 
that he had caused 1 8,600 Netherlanders to be executed. 
This was the year in which Spenser took his Bachelor 
of Arts degree. In 1579 William of Nassau was 
nominated Stadtholder of Holland, and in July 1581 
there was the Dutch Declaration of Independence. 
In 1585-7 there was the expedition of Leicester in 
aid of the struggling Protestants, during which, on the 
22d of September, 1586, Sir Philip Sidney, noblest 
type of the young Elizabethan Englishman, was killed 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 3g 

at Zutphen. As Athens rose to her highest point dur- 
ing the struggle with Persia, so the effect of this 
struggle for life and freedom upon the Dutch provinces 
engaged in it, was their prosperity. Old towns became 
larger, and new towns were built; the ports of the free 
states were filled with shipping. In these days, 
Moscow, Constantinople and Paris were the three 
largest capitals. The London of Elizabeth, astir with 
highest life, was a town of about 160,000 inhabitants. 
But when the whole power of Spain was gathered 
against her, England, stirred to the soul, poured out her 
highest energies. The land was full of music. With 
the soul of Freedom for its Prospero, 

This isle was full of noises 

Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. 

Still there were courtly singers, Sir Walter Raleigh 
struck boldly with his privateers at wealth of Spain 
upon the seas, and sang praise of his Queen. Sidney 
was poet, and wrote a "Defence of Poesy," the first 
piece of English criticism that looked through the 
letter to the spirit of good literature. Sidney's nearest 
friends were Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer, poets 
both. It was Dyer who sang 

My mind to me a kingdom is, 

Such present joys therein I find, 
That it excels all other bliss 

That earth affords or grows by kind : 
Though much I want which most would have, 
Yet still my mind forbids to crave. 

All the dramatists were lyric poets, for the greater 
must include the less. He is no dramatist who can- 



40 A GLANCE AT THE PAST I 

not write a song. Not only the greater poets, as 
Spenser and Shakespeare, but singers like Thomas : 
Watson and Henry Constable who aspired no higher,, 
scattered sonnets. Elizabeth herself wrote rhymes, J 
and so did James of Scotland. The luxury of fancy 
spent itself on dress, and played ingenious tricks 
upon language, following Italian example that then- 
spread through all the literature of Europe. But the ■ 
strain for antithesis, alliteration and far-fetched in- 
genuity of simile, was nowhere so pleasantly successful 
as in England, where it took its name of Euphuism from 
the title of a book of John Lyly's. And Lyly's " Euphues," 
published in 1579, while written in the dainty fashion 
that was to make it acceptable, was deeply earnest in 
its purpose. It sought to enforce among the rich such 
care for education as had been shown in 1570 by 
Roger Ascham's " Schoolmaster," — the next famous book : 
upon education, after Sir Thomas Elyot's "Governour," ' 
— and a regard for religion not enfeebled by the lighter " 
fashions of the day. ' 

Through all home discords, fellowship in a com- 
mon danger from without held England and Elizabeth 
in strong accord until after the defeat of the Spanish 
armada. Struggle between the two different types of 
thought, which had arranged nations of Europe into 
opposite camps, became then less urgent on a Euro- 
pean question, and attention was transferred to the 
home controversies. These also turned chiefly upon 
questions of holding by authority and the traditions of 
the past, or giving a new range to thought and build- 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 41 

ing for the future. The queen also was unmarried 
and had no direct heir to her throne. Of more than 
twelve possible claimants to the succession she would 
not name one. It was enough for her that quiet 
arrangements were made to secure the throne after 
her death to James of Scotland. With many claimants to 
the throne and no declared successor, it was commonly 
feared that the divided land would be again weakened 
by civil war. It is for this reason that the two best 
heroic poems of Elizabeth's later time made it their 
theme to paint the misery of civil war. Daniel published, 
in 1595 and succeeding years, his poem on "the Civil 
Wars of Lancaster and York." Drayton followed in 
1596 with his poem on "the Lamentable Civil Wars 
of Edward the Second and the Barons." Even Shake- 
speare had begun in those latter days with work upon 
plays that had civil war for their theme. The three 
Parts of Henry VI. were probably produced in 1592, 
and a bad version of the second of these plays was 
printed in 1594 as "the First Part of the Contention 
betwixt the Houses of York and Lancaster." Thomas 
Lodge also, among the dramatists, dealt with the same 
theme when he produced his play of "the Wounds of 
Civil War, lively set forth in the true tragedies of 
Marius and Sylla," first printed in 1594. 

Under James the First there was not only, during 
the first ten or twelve years of the reign, the time of 
the full ripeness of the English drama, preceding the 
several stages of its swift decay, but the energies 
aroused under Elizabeth gave impulse to a great ad- 



42 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

vance of thought in the domain of Science. Francis 
Bacon was about three years older than Shakespeare, 
whom he outlived ten years. Bacon lived through 
the whole of the reign of James I., which contains all 
his maturest work. He had not thriven to his mind 
in Elizabeth's reign; but he rose rapidly under James. 
He lived by law and loved philosophy. As lawyer 
Bacon rose to be Lord Chancellor, and as philosopher 
he gave the strongest impulse to a sound method of 
experimental search into the secrets of Nature. His 
dispassionate experimental method failed when applied 
to life. The emotions have their part with intellect 
and will in shaping human action, and on critical 
occasions Bacon failed for want of that impulse 
which has no part in the work of philosophical re- 
search but assists in determining the healthy acts of 
men in their common relations. As a thinker Francis 
Bacon fastened even at College upon the idea which 
it was his life's work to develope. He wished that 
philosophers, instead of turning their wits round and 
round upon themselves, would use the mind as a tool 
with which to hew out truth from the great quarry of 
nature and shape it into use for man. From any 
observed facts in the world about us, let us by thought- 
ful experiment find our way in to the knowledge of 
the law that governs them. But after the law had 
been found by this inductive method, there followed 
the carrying out of the main purpose of Bacon's 
system, and that was, to deduce from the law prac- 
tical application of it that would enlarge the dominion 



OP F.NGrJSH LITERATURE. ^3 

of man. When Franklin began search into the un- 
known cause of thunder and lightning by sending up 
his kites into a thunderstorm, there was beginning of 
inductive experiment; and when, through experiment 
after experiment, there came knowledge of electricity 
and of the laws under which it acts, deduction fol- 
lowed. Thus through one only of the many ways of 
employing the new force, the electric telegraph, an 
invention as important as that of the mariner's com- 
pass, has enlarged the powers of man. Such dis- 
coveries. Bacon argued, instead of being made at rare 
intervals by accident, w^ould be made frequently as 
the result of definite inquiry, if men followed the 
methods of the New Organon, which he opposed to 
the Organon of Aristotle. There may have been no- 
thing new in Bacon's teaching, but in him the energ}^ 
of the time put it into the mind of the man who was 
in force of intellect second only to Shakespeare, to 
apply himself with all his might to the enforcement 
of the great central principles of true research in 
science. The teaching of Bacon set men who had 
scientific tastes inquiring. In the days of Charles the 
First there were little communities, at Oxford and at, 
Gresham College in London, of men who were seeking 
the advance of knowledge by experiment, as Bacon 
counselled. The movement gathered strength, and one 
issue of it was the founding in 1662 of "the Royal 
Society for Improving Natural Knowledge," which is 
to this day in England the great public expression of 
the Fellowship of Science. 



44 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

Science was born again, while the poetical drama 

passed into decay. Like causes had been at worl^ 

to make the days of Elizabeth and James the great 

period alike of English and of Spanish Drama. Spanish 

plays, when they were not on sacred subjects, founded 

their plots commonly on complications of intrigue, in 

which animal love was the motive power. Influenced 

of the Spanish Drama became marked in France, and! 

it advanced to England. Under Elizabeth, dramatists; 

great and small made plays of tales that touched 

humanity in all its forms. Shakespeare still did so; 

in the reign of James I., and so, in his own way, did! 

Ben Jonson, but among other men there was an almost! 

general acceptance of the fashion of the time. The 

plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, were all first produced 1 

in the reign of James. Apart from Shakespeare's there' 

are none which contain finer strains of imaginative J 

verse; but there is no longer, in the choice and J 

management of the plots a range wide as all the \ 

interests of man. Usually also it is not love on which J 

the plots turn, but a sensual passion that mistakes its ' 

name. The Puritans began war against plays chiefly 

because they were at first acted on Sundays. After I 

that cause of contention ceased, there remained no I 

very substantial ground of ofl"ence. Shakespeare wrote ' 

for audiences that represented fairly the whole body 

of the English people. But when the matter of the , 

plays lost wholesomeness there was a gradual desertion i 

of the playhouses by men who represented no small I 

part of the best life of England. This lowered the 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 45 

one of the audiences. The stage reflects only the 

Vorld before the curtain and within the playhouse 

vails. When, therefore, the audience sinks below a 

air representation of the whole -life of the country, 

he plays sink with it. In Ben Jonson's relation with 

he stage we find vigorous illustration of this process 

)f decay. He could not refrain from expressions of 

:ontempt for audiences out of which the large life of 

lumanity was gone. Turning, at last, from "the loathed 

itage," with an ode pouring fierce scorn upon the men 

,vho called themselves its critics and its patrons, who 

discussed each day "something they call a play," he 

5aid of them 

If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, 
Envy them not, their palate's with the swine. 

rhat ode was written in the year 1630, only fourteen 
y^ears after the death of Shakespeare. 

There was decay also in the versification of the 
plays. Marlowe had brought blank verse into use as 
the measure of dramatic poetry. Shakespeare had 
brought it to perfection. With increased familiarity 
there had come increased freedom in its use. With 
many dramatists in Shakespeare's latter day, freedom 
of use meant often careless use. During the reigns of 
James I. and Charles I. the carelessness was more 
habitual. At last the decline was general, and when 
the drama was revived, after the Commonwealth, those 
who tried to write blank verse produced usually prose 
hacked into bad lengths. The art of writing blank 
verse was extinct, and critics were pretty well agreed 



46 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 



to give up its use in the drama. No great use had 
ever been made of it in other forms of poetry; Buti 
just when this was settled, Milton produced in blank- 
verse "Paradise Lost," and upon that rock the critical 
cockboats came to pieces. 

There was decay even in the polite forms of 
ingenious speech. Elizabethan Euphuism lost its fresh 
elastic life, the strain that still was healthy strain of 
a quick wit. The strain remained, painfully showing 
itself in stiff-jointed struggles for agility. The later 
Euphuism was laboured, obscure and pedantic. What! 
we called in England Euphuism was a form of writing 
that spread out of Italy to France and Spain as well 
as to England. The fashion being artificial could not 
last, and the manner of its decay was the same 
throughout. In Italy, Spain, France, England it was 
passing at the same time through like stages of decay. 
While Donne stands for type of the change in English 
Literature, its type in Italy is Marino, in Spain, Gon- 
gora. Our Euphuists were contemporary with a cor- \ 
responding school of poets called in Spanish Literature i 
the Conceptistas, and our Later Euphuists, whom Samuel 
Johnson afterwards called "metaphysical poets," v/ere 
contemporary with a school of Spanish poets called i 
the Cultos, who, like our later Euphuists, mightily] 
affected culture. Culture! The aim of culture is to 
bring forth in their due season the natural fruits of 
the earth. 

But the deep religious life that has never died in 
the English people, and is the strength of many 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 47 

opposite forms of opinion, found expression still, what- 
ever the outside dress in which fashion had clothed 
it. Even in Donne's poetry that inner grace of thought 
makes itselt felt through the misfitting dress of words 
that cumbers it. The poems of George Herbert's 
"Temple" were written in 1630-33 during the three 
last years of his life, when he was rector of Bemerton, 
housed in a damp hollow and slowly dying of con- 
sumption. These poems have all the outward features 
of the later Euphuism, but the living soul of the poet 
has struck its own fire into them all. As the flesh 
was sickening and dying, the spirit rose in health and 
life. Herbert represented the English church as loved by 
those who were most ready to find emblems in aid of 
spiritual life in that form of ceremonial against which 
the Puritans contended. But no form of opinion has ever 
dulled the English reader's sense of the pure spirit of 
devotion that breathes out of George Herbert's singing. 
His "Temple" had so great an effect upon men's 
minds, that it gave rise to a little school of poets who 
avowed themselves his followers and imitators. Best 
of the group and nearest to his master, whom he 
sometimes equalled, Henry Vaughan, was, like Herbert 
himself, a Welshman. 

There was decay also under James I., or tendency 
to decay, in the old sense of the relation between 
Crown and People. Elizabeth had felt like an ab- 
solute queen, and had stretched her prerogative. The 
people believed that, "divinity doth hedge a king," 
and with the Queen, true Englishwoman, whatever 



48 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

her faults, it was Elizabeth for England and not 
England for Elizabeth. With her successor it was 
rather England for James than James for England. 
Such a king soon brought into question the limits of 
royal authority. Locke has observed that liberty is 
apt to suffer under a good sovereign, because the 
trust of the people goes with every undue use of the 
royal power. The motive and the end are held to 
justify the means. But when a weak rule follows, 
ground has to be recovered upon which the Sovereign 
can no longer be trusted. Then may come strife. 
The question of the limit of authority extended, there- 
fore, in the reign of James the First from Church to 
State. 

One of the Church questions agitated in those 
days touched the divine authority of Tithes. John 
Selden, trained to the law, was, among all of his 
time, the one man most learned in what we now call 
the constitutional history of England. He took for his 
motto a Greek sentence meaning "Above all things. 
Liberty." He was an antiquary who distinctly valued 
study of the past as giving, "necessary light to the 
present," and who spoke of "the too studious affecta- 
tion of bare and sterile antiquity" as "nothing else 
than to be exceeding busy about nothing." Among 
the books written by Selden that brought a knowledge 
of the past to bear upon interpretation of the present, 
was one, published in 16 18, on "the History of Tithes." 
His purpose, he said, was not to take any side in the 
argument for and against their divine institution, but 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 4Q 

to bring together a narrative of facts and leave 
readers to use them as they pleased. Selden's facts 
bore very distinctly against that principle of divine 
authority which King James cherished in church 
matters as an outwork for defence of the great keep in 
which he himself dwelt. He had Selden before him, 
reasoned with him, brought him before the High 
Commission Court, ordered a confutation of his book 
to be written, and said to him, "If you or any of your 
friends shall write against this confutation I will throw 
you into prison." It was in the same year that James 
caused Sir Walter Raleigh to be executed for the 
satisfaction of the King of Spain, In 1621 the King 
came into conflict with his Parliament. Being offended 
at advice from Parliament, he told the House of Com- 
mons that its privileges were held from the Crown, 
were "rather a toleration than inheritance," and that 
if members forgot their duty they would be dis- 
allow^ed. The House of Commons took counsel with 
John Selden, and in accordance with his evidence 
entered a protest on its journals declaring that, "the 
liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdiction of 
Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright 
and inheritances of the subjects of England." King 
James at a Privy Council sent for the Commons' 
journal and with his own hand erased that entry. 
Then he dissolved the Parliament, imprisoned some of 
its members, and placed Selden in custody of the 
Sheriff. When afterwards, at the close of his reign, 
James was obliged to summon a new Parliament, 

0/ English Literature. 4 



50 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

John Selden entered it as member for Lancaster, and 
he contributed his scholarship to the contest against 
exercise of absolute authority by Charles the First. 

When James the First died, John Milton, a youth of 
seventeen, went from St. Paul's school in London to 
Christ's College, Cambridge. The land was at that 
time full of song, and the English still were, as they 
had been since the days of Henry VIIL, distinctly a 
musical nation. In Elizabeth's reign part of the 
common furniture of a barber's shop was a pair of 
virginals on which a customer could play while he 
was waiting to be trimmed. It required no special 
preparation to strike up, in a chance company of 
friends, catches, madrigals, and part songs. Skill in 
song writing was an attainment that became the man 
of fashion, and perhaps there was no period in which 
song writing had a larger place in English Literature 
than the reign of Charles the First. Men who in 
earlier times would have written many plays and a 
few songs, now wrote one or two plays and many 
songs. Songs of the cavaliers sometimes glorified the 
drunkard and the light-o'-love, in playful strains 
that were meant only as a gay form of defiance to 
the Puritan. Among men of less wit the same 
antagonism only made the descent easier to fellow- 
ship with Gryll. 

In such times Milton, after seven years of study 
at Cambridge, had withdrawn to his father's house in 
Horton, a village near Windsor and Eton, and was 
labouring to fit himself for high use of what talent he 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 5 1 

had as a poet. He had closed his sonnet of self- 
dedication, at the age of twenty-three, with a resolve 
to which he was, throughout his after life, as true as 
man can be: 

All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
As ever in my great task-master's eye. 

Milton was in his twenty- fourth year when he went 
home to Horton, and remained there until he was 
within eight months of the age of thirty. At Horton 
he wrote L' Allegro and II Penseroso, Arcades, Comus 
and Lycidas. "Arcades" was a slight domestic masque 
written for the family of the Earl of Bridgewater, to be 
used as an expression of family affection. Comus 
was a state masque, written to be presented at Ludlow 
Castle by the Earl of Bridgewater, when he gave, as 
representative of the sovereign, a grand entertainment 
upon coming into residence as Lord President of the 
West. It was produced in the great hall at Ludlow 
Castle on the 29th of September 1634, and must have 
been written not later than in the preceding spring, to 
allow time for the writing of the music to the words, 
the learning of parts, preparation of elaborate scenes 
and masks, and requisite rehearsals. In the preced- 
ing year, 1633, a Puritan lawyer, William Prynne, 
author of many books maintaining the less liberal 
form of Puritan opinion, published his "Histriomastix," 
which denounced stage plays, masques and dances in 
uncompromising terms. The chief actors in masques 
were members and friends of the family that gave the 
entertainment. The queen herself took part in the 

4* 



52 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

Court Masques, and there arose outcry against Prynne 
that passages in his book were a direct insult to the 
Queen. Prynne published his book about Christmas 

1632. On the first of February 1633 (new style) 
Prynne was committed to the Tower. He was there 
kept prisoner without bail. Information was not ex- 
hibited against him in the Starchamber until June 

1633, and the sentence of the Starchamber was not 
pronounced until February 17, 1634. It was, that 
Prynne should pay a fine of ^5000, be expelled 
from his Inn, disbarred, deprived of his Oxford 
degree, set in the pillory at Westminster and Cheap- 
side, and in each pillory have one of his ears cut off. 
Though many of the Lords did not expect that such 
a judgment would be executed, and the Queen inter- 
ceded, there was no remission, and Prynne was pil- 
loried on the 7th and loth of May 1634, either while 
Milton was writing "Comus" or when he had just 
finished it. 

That Milton, who was, like Spenser, in the best 
sense of the word, but in none of its narrower senses, 
Puritan, should precisely at this time be asked to 
write a masque and accept the commission, is worth 
notice. The Inns of Court spent an unusual sum upon 
a masque, as a loyal way of repudiating the opinions 
of the disgraced lawyer. Some like feeling of loyalty 
may have caused the Earl of Bridgewater to grace 
his entertainment with a masque that required costly 
preparation. Milton was then in his twenty-sixth 
year, and with a just sense of the poet's office, he 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 53 

showed that through masque or play as purely as 
through psalm or hymn the true music of life could 
be expressed. Without a touch of churlish contro- 
versy, or one word that could check innocent enjoy- 
ment of the festival to which he added new delight, 
he made his delight consist in a setting forth of the 
victory of temperance over excess, of the true spirit of 
purity over the sensual debasement of the flesh. 
The charming rod of Comus that must be reversed 
before his power is destroyed, enables the spirit of 
unlicensed mirth to cause things to seem other than 
they are. When the fashion of the time saw only 
hospitality in him who forced his friend down to the 
level of the swine, Comus had cast his spells into the 
spungy air, of power to cheat the eye with blear il- 
lusion. When Sabrina, nymph of the Severn, was 
raised to release the lady from the chair of Comus to 
which she was bound by her magic art, it was Sabrina, 
because the Severn was the river most familiar at 
Ludlow. From any other river Milton might have 
raised a waternymph to typify the spirit of Tem- 
perance that must arise to break the social spells of 
a bad custom. Comus escaped. His wand was not 
reversed. He lived on to become God of the English 
Court in Charles the Second's time. Only in our 
day we have seen his wand reversed. 

As the old question of the limit of authority be- 
came more and more urgent, and conflict of argument 
was blended with conflict of bodily force, above the 
tumult of civil war there rose upon every side the 



54 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

voices of the leaders in the war of thought. By thought 
alone the issues would be finally determined. The 
chief philosopher of the time, Thomas Hobbes, reasoned 
out the position of the citizen, and nature of the Body 
Politic. He argued that, like the body natural, the 
body politic must needs be, for its own well being, in 
absolute subjection to a single head. Such a head, 
he said, is the king, constituted by a society of men 
naturally equal, who give up to a central authority, 
for their own better preservation, some part of the 
right inherent in each one. Sir Robert Filmer, a loyal 
gentleman of less intellectual mark, acquired pro- 
minence by arguing that Hobbes conceded too much 
when he based the absolute authority of kings upon 
a social compact among men naturally equal. Men, 
he said, never were naturally equal. First there was 
Adam. When Eve followed, Adam was master. When 
sons were born, their father was their superior. Out 
of the divine ordinance of fatherhood Sir Robert 
Filmer drew the origin of an authority in kings re- 
ceived from God alone. When the king's cause was 
lost, conflict of thought was only the more active. The 
king was tried, condemned, and executed for treason 
against his people. Was there indeed a reciprocal 
obligation, and could a king as well as a subject be- 
come guilty of the capital offence of treason? Milton 
had taken no part in the physical struggle, he was one 
who, as he said, "in all his writings spoke never that 
any man's skin should be grazed." His part was with 
those only who ranged thought against thought for 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 55 

the defence of a just liberty. From the outbreak of 
the Civil war to the settlement of the Revolution was 
a period of about five and forty years. The man of 
five and twenty had seen all its changes by the time 
he reached three score and ten, and lived through 
the din of all the conflicting arguments of all the 
parties. Whatever the outward changes that went 
with it, all was one continuous effort to find for Eng- 
land a solution of the problem of the limit of authority, 
so far as that was to be done by settling the relations 
between Government and People. The Commonwealth 
was an experiment in that direction. Really sustained 
by the vigour of a single man, all seemed to be sound 
while Cromwell governed. Opinion was freely ex- 
pressed, in many forms, as to the best constitution of 
a state. Thomas Hobbes published in 1651 his 
"Leviathan," the chief embodiment of the old argument 
for an absolute sovereign; James Harrington published 
in 1656 his "Oceana," the first plea in English Literature 
for vote by ballot after the manner of the Venetian 
republic, filling every office of the state by free elec- 
tion, with frequent return of the elected to a test- 
ing of their continued fitness by a fresh dependence 
on the votes of their constituents. Milton's tract on 
"the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" dealt with 
the essential principle in contest, and reasoned against 
irresponsible power. The indictment of England 
before Europe, written in 1649 ^7 Claude Saumaise, 
Selden was asked to answer, but Selden pointed to 
Milton, knowing well that, in the pleading of such a 



56 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

cause before the world, acuteness in applying know- 
ledge of the past to uses of the present needs to be 
quickened by the fervour of a high minded enthusiasm. 
Milton therefore wrote, in Latin, for all Europe, the 
reply to Saumaise, his first "Defence of the People of 
England," and sacrificed his failing eyesight over the 
labour of a second Defence. In all this there is to 
be felt under passing . accidents of controversy, the 
labouring of English thought towards the settlement 
not reached till 1689. J^^^^ before the death of Crom- 
well, Richard Baxter added to the Controversy his 
"Holy Commonwealth," in which he condemned ar- 
rangements that, like Harrington's, left God out of 
account. Baxter made God head of the Common- 
wealth, and a king ruler under God and for his people. 
He upheld monarchy, though he had felt it his duty 
to make common cause with those who sought to check 
the aggressions of Charles I. 

The argument touching the best way of providing 
for the maintenance of the religious life within the 
nation was carried on now mainly by the representa- 
tives of three forms of opinion. Two of them agreed 
in the desire to secure unity within the church by an 
accord of opinion, determined by authority. They 
differed as to the form of the authority, but if the 
Presbyterian form had been supreme, its theory of 
Church Union would have impelled it to force, if it 
could, all England into conformity. This bias of 
opinion was in direct accord with the principles of 
monarchy. The third party was that of the Indepen- 



OF ENGLISH LiTERATUl-lE. 57 

dents. In the time of Elizabeth there was an obscure 
sect known as the Brownists, who held a doctrine then 
supposed to urge direct encouragement of heresy and 
schism. Their argument was that in matters of 
opinion men never will agree if they are free, as they 
should be, to think for themselves. They proposed, 
therefore, that in religion all who took the Bible for 
their rule of faith should find in that fact their bond 
of union; that each man should be free to draw his 
own conclusions as to the right way to the higher 
spiritual life, that he should then be free also to unite 
himself for religious worship into an independent con- 
gregation with those who agreed with him in their 
choice of a spiritual guide. A church thus formed 
would represent within itself all the diversities of 
human opinion. Each of its congregations would re- 
spect the different opinions of its neighbours, molesting 
none and by none molested, and all would be firmly 
united as one brotherhood, not by an impossible accord 
of intellectual opinion, but by that essential spirit of 
religion to which every form of doctrine is designed 
to lead, the "charity, which is the bond of perfectness." 
As this form of opinion spread, the obscure Brownists 
of Elizabeth's time became the strong body of the 
Independents in the days of Charles I. and the 
Commonwealth. Winning at first readiest acceptance 
from those in whom the bias was rather towards free- 
dom of individual thought than towards authority, it 
included the men with whom, in civil affairs, the 
theory of a republic would find favour. Each of these 



58 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

forms of opinion had, in the days of Civil war and of 
the Common we ahh, an earnest and pureminded re- 
presentative. Jeremy Taylor maintained the ideal of 
the episcopal established Church; Richard Baxter re- 
presented in the purest form the Presbyterian prin- 
ciple; John Milton, the Independent. Of these three 
men, however different in degree and character of 
intellect, the spiritual life was one, they were alike 
religious. Jeremy Taylor had endeavoured to bring 
all within the Church by widening its pale, and ask- 
ing for no other test of Church fellowship than com- 
mon acceptance of that oldest and simplest formula 
known as the Apostles' Creed. Milton desired no test 
of Church fellowship but an acceptance of the Bible 
as the basis of opinion, and upon that basis opinion 
wholly free. Each pleaded for charity and toleration. 
When Milton condemned Prelacy, he did. not condemn 
those who preferred prelacy within the Church to 
which they joined themselves, but those who required 
all men, whatever their personal convictions, to accept 
prelacy as the one form of government within the 
Church. Richard Baxter, in his numerous books, again 
and again pleaded for the healing of dissension and 
the restoration of peace to the Church. What he 
especially observed was the large accord between the 
Presbyterians and the church from which they had 
seceded. His aim, after the Restoration, was to obtain 
from either side little concessions that would make it 
possible to bring back the whole Presbyterian body 
into what Langland had called the Castle of Unity. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 59 

From Baxter's point of view there was no scheme to 
be found that could inchide the Independents. The 
radical difference between Presbyterian and Indepen- 
dent had, in fact, been chief cause of the divisions 
that after Cromwell's death produced the failure of 
the Commonwealth. England, accepting the fact of 
the failure, tried monarchy again, and could do so only 
by the Restoration of the Stuarts. Prince Charles had 
been taught in a stern school and might have learnt 
his lesson. The Presbyterians at the Restoration were 
too strong a body to be directly slighted. But they 
had not been tolerant in the days of their supremacy. 
The restored Church was full of men who had suffered 
deeply from the bitterness of party spirit. There was 
a time now for retaliation. All men were not Baxters 
and Jeremy Taylors, and among the natural passions 
and resentments of the time Baxter found it impossible 
to work his cure for Church Divisions. Still also the 
Roman Catholics were a strong body in the land, able 
to draw shrewd conclusions on their own behalf from 
the continued strife among Reformers. 

There passed, then, into the reign of Charles the 
Second all this religious energy, together with the civil 
controversy that seemed to be settled but had, in fact, 
been only advanced a step or two. The days of his 
adversity had taught the new king nothing except 
some of the fashions that were least worth borrowing 
from France. As far as his influence extended, in 
every sense, good music went out of fashion. He had 
no interest in the old English harmonies, in sweet 



bo A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

accord of various instruments, fair type of the accord 
of various minds. He cared only for dance tunes to 
which he could snap his fingers, and these, he thought, 
were played best on the fiddle. The king's band,! 
therefore, was transformed into a body of French 
fiddlers; the same music found its way into the re- 
vived theatres, with dancing to it, and this was glanced : 
at by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in his 
burlesque play, "the Rehearsal," when spirits descended! 
with fiddlers dressed in green, and "the green frogs 
croaked forth a coranto of France." But there came 
into England at this time a more important influence 
of France over our literature. In outward forms, 
partly but not altogether for good, Italian influence 
went out and French influence came in. When many 
of the cavaliers, after the loss of their cause, formed 
a little English colony in Paris, they became guests 
in the salons of the Hotel Rambouillet, and were in 
daily relation with the new critical spirit. The Mar- 
quise de Rambouillet had led a movement among the 
ladies who, as queens of society might govern its 
usages, for the repression of all kinds of evil speaking. 
Even the common forms of speech in which a lady 
could not distinguish herself from her chambermaid, 
were avoided as low, but there was at the same time 
an honest attempt to aid in freeing the language from 
uncertainty of conflicting dialects and shifting usage, 
so that there might be one fixed language, a standard 
French, through which to express an enduring litera- 
ture. Out of this social movement the French Aca- 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 6 1 

kmy had arisen in 1635, the year before the birth of 
Boileau. The Academy was to produce a Dictionary 
hat was to be the accredited list of words thence- 
brth to be adopted as classical French. In this pro- 
:ess of fixing the language by a formal effort, pre- 
ference was naturally given to words of Latin origin. 
French being a Romance language, such words were 
:n harmony with its whole structure. The French 
.\cademy was at work, the ladies, called in the polite 
strain encouraged by themselves, les Precieuses, were 
still in dainty league with the grammarians and curi- 
ous in words and phrases, when the exiled English 
courtiers came among them. At the same time the 
true vigour of French literature was rising to its highest, 
and already Corneille was producing his first and best 
plays. Critical discussion of words was passing on to- 
wards a criticism that would touch the essence of the 
thought within the words. This movement began while 
the Italian influence in its decayed form still prevailed. 
In their own polite way, the Precieuses did affect litera- 
ture. They believed that it became a person of 
quality to have taste in writing, and that Literature 
was a matter gf high culture with which the vulgar 
world had nothing to do. Thus taught in France, the 
English courtiers after the Restoration also affected 
taste. He was a man of wit and taste who could 
write verse to the tune of a saraband. A great noble 
might show taste also by discovering and aiding 
genius in others. There was still need of the relation 
of patron and client. In France that relation was main- 



62 A GLANCE AT THE PAST , 

tained in the most elaborate and dainty forms, as ] 
part of a great man's state. But Moli^re had justj 
then in France declared his power, and through him i 
the genius of comedy was lavishing rare wealth off 
unaffected wit upon the expression of a shrewd good I 
sense. Moli^re wrote as his friend Boileau would 
have had men write; and Boileau, who was only 
twenty four years old when Charles the Second be- 
came king of England, in that year began to sweep » 
off with his satires the last traces of Italian in- 
fluence. "Let us turn," he said, "from the paste' 
brilliants of Italy. All should tend to good sense.",' 
The critical influence of Boileau rose, and extended", 
through nearly all Europe. It came to its height after • 
167 1, when he published his imitation of Horace's Art ; 
of Poetry, H Art Poetique. France then was infested . 
with small critics, and in England too a polite rhyming 
about prose and prosing about rhyme became the 
fashion. John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, wrote in [ 
verse an "Essay on Poetry," and an "Essay on Satire." 
Lord Lansdowne wrote a poem on "Unnatural Flights 
in Poetry." The Earl of Roscommon, best of the group, , 
wrote in verse an "Essay on Translated Verse." Boileau 
himself was a true critic who taught at the right time 
the right doctrine. He was right when he bade those 
who had strayed too far from good sense to study the na- 
tive dignity of style in the best poets of the Augustan 
time. With an ease worthy of all imitation, those 
poets had clothed each thought in simple and natural 
words so truly fitted that the words they used are for 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 63 

all time the happiest expression of the thought they 
uttered. Go to Nature, said Boileau, but see how the 
great artist follows Nature, and look up to him as your 
example. The small critics could understand only 
the letter of all this. In England the desire to 
avoid what was "low" in style led to a choice of 
words from the Latin side of the language, from which 
there was built up a separate book English; so that 
it was accounted as great a mistake to write like a 
man, as to talk like a book. This fog came down 
from among the heights although it did not stay by 
them long, but here and there it lingers still among 
the valleys. As Boileau did not begin to write his 
satires until 1660, it was not until six or seven years 
after the Restoration that his influence was generally 
felt in England. 

Because the French critics knew nothing about Eng- 
lish Literature, their followers shared their ignorance, 
and for two or three generations the Commonwealth 
period seemed to have fallen as a cloud between the 
present and the past. 

We were on the way tx) that state of critical con- 
ceit which young Addison reflected when he wrote at 
College, in the manner of his time, a sketch of the 
great English poets from Chaucer to Dryden. He 
showed his ignorance of Chaucer by adopting the 
opinion of the day. 

In vain he jests in his unpolished strain, 
And tries to make his readers laugh, in vain; 



64 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

and sank deeper still when he followed his blind 
guides by looking on the age of Elizabeth as a "bar- 
barous age," 

Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage, 
In antick tales amused a barbarous age. 
But now the mystic tale that pleased of yore, 
Can charm an understanding age no more. 

Shakespeare, young Addison left out altogether. A14 
though the French critics understood Milton no better^ 
than Shakespeare, Addison fastened upon him from'^ 
the first, and since the nightingale was nothing to; 
the cuckoos, was content to say of him "he seems} ^ 
above the critic's nicer law." 1^ 

Free to return to verse after long labour for theJ^ 
direct service of his country, Milton had finished!^ 
writing "Paradise Lost" in the year of the plague of?^ 
London, 1665, and he published it in 1667, the year!*' 
after the Fire by which great part of the city was;'' 
destroyed. At some time in the latter years of the^'' 
Commonwealth his mind passed from its first coui'^ 
ception, which was of an Epic with king Arthur for!" 
its hero, to the theme he finally adopted. The land^f- 
was full of controversies touching the form of religion }L 
Among the Commonwealth men there was a constant! fi 
bandying of technical terms in theology, speculatioriP' 
over dogmas founded on the fall of man. Milton had''^' 
little liking for this kind of argument, he made it ir^ft 
Paradise Lost one of the entertainments of the devils ^1 
who were to amuse themselves as they pleased until |w 
Satan's return, that they 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 65 

reasoned high 
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end in wanderinjT mazes lost. 



The starting point of scepticism in that day was from 
L dogmatic theology that seemed to argue God unjust. 
Vhen Milton took for his theme the Fall of Man, he 
aw that he could shape out of it a poem fulfilling in 
he highest degree all requirements of the Epic, while 
t would set to music the religion of his country, as 
le felt it, and "justify the ways of God to man." The 
LCtion was one; it was great in the persons concerned, 
he First Parents of the race; great in itself; and, ac- 
:ording to the religious faith of his countrymen, 
upremely great in its consequences. He was supplied 
.Iso with that supernatural machinery which was held 
be essential to an epic poem. Ancient traditions of 
mgels and archangels enabled him to shape the con- 
ending powers of Good and Evil into spiritual forms 
:ntirely suited to his theme, and wanting in no ele- 
nent of dignity or grandeur. In Vergil's ^Eneid the 
•ne theme is the settlement of ^neas among the 
^atins, great in its consequence, because it laid the 
irst foundations of the Roman Empire. What hap- 
)ened before the action of the poem, and what was to 
:ome of it, Vergil included in two episodes, ^neas 
enewing his old griefs in narrative to Dido tells all 
hat preceded; descending afterwards to the under- 
^rorld, he learns from the shade of Anchises what shall 
ollow. Milton, in like manner, has for his one theme 

Of English Literature . 5 



66 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

the Temptation and Fall, with its immediate con-|iJ 
sequence, the expulsion from Paradise. What came|)f 
before, is told in the discourse of Raphael with Adam pi 
what should follow, is learnt from the Vision shown byiji 
Michael, and the discourse of Michael before Adan:?;; 
and Eve quit Eden. That episode shows the subject oiju 
the poem great in its consequence, not through man'jjil 
ruin, but through his redemption. While Milton, wittlie 
aid of the highest intellectual culture, enshrined irpi 
Charles the Second's reign the religion of his country! 1 
in epic that rose high "above the Aonian Mount; '|r 
Bunyan in his way, unlearned in any but one book 
shaped his religion into homely allegory of the Chris|r 
tian's flight from destruction, and of his aids and peril 
as a Pilgrim who sought everlasting life. 

In 1 67 1, three years before his death, Miltori 
published in one volume "Paradise Regained" and 
"Samson Agonistes." Paradise Regained was a minia^ 
ture epic, in some sense a companion to Paradise Lost! 
since the theme of one poem was a Temptation anci 
a Fall, the theme of the other a Temptation and c{lc 
Victory. The epic form in "Paradise Regained" wan-ll 
deliberately subdued into harmony with one unbrokerlff 
strain, of which the burden may be said to be, "Res -111 
in the Lord, and wait patiently for him." Paradise ii 
to be Regained by every man who bears the tempta 
lions of life, whatever their form, in the patient spiri 
of Christ, who waits his father's time and seeks onh 
to do his father's will. The temptation to distrust anci 
impatience was great in those days for men who likt 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 67 

liltoii had battled for what they held to be the cause 
f civil and religious freedom, and who saw, in the 
olitical and social life of England under Charles the 
econd, exultation of the Philistines over the fallen 
ause of God. For this reason Milton again shaped 
is song to the times, and when all seemed dark 
bout him, when there was no man who could 
ill from what quarter deliverance would come, he 
ublished his last poems. In "Paradise Regained" he 
welt upon the patience of Christ, meek and un- 
•oubled in his firm rest upon God. In the midst of 
Samson Agonistes," he set in a fine chorus questioning 
•om the condition of the country, questioning from 
ae sorrows of the individual man; but he set it there 
tiat it might have its answer in the close. 

God of our fathers ! what is man 

That thou towards him with hand so various, 

Or might I say contrarious, 

Temper'st thy providence through his short course? 

The foremost of those who seemed chosen by God 
advance his glory and effect the people's safety — 
he Cromwells, Hampdens, Pyms, over the ruin of 
/hose work many despaired in 1671, — even toward 
tiese, thus dignified, 

Thou oft 
Amidst their height of noon, 

Changest thy countenance, and thy hand, with no regard 
Of highest favours past 

From thee on them, or them to thee of service. 
Nor only dost degrade them, or remit 
To Hfe obscured, which were a fair dismission, 
But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them high, 

5* 



68 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

Unseemly falls in human eye, 

Too grievous for the trespass or omission; 

Oft leav'st them to the hostile sword 

Of heathen or profane, their carcases ij 

To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived; 

Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times. 

And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude. 

But Milton's poem, and his life as a poet, closed ii 
the midst of outward darkness with expression of thi 
quiet faith that 

All is best, though we oft doubt 
What the unsearchable dispose 
Of highest Wisdom brings about. 
And ever best found in the close. 

ol 



In this case the event showed clearly enough tha 
Milton's faith was w^ell founded. The very circum 
stances that were taken as grounds of despair wen 
those which secured good speed to the settlement de|o 
sired. The English Revolution followed within eighteei;li( 
years of the poems in which Milton sought to suggesjic 
that it is one part of a true faith in God not to despai 
of the Republic. 

Taking a scripture parallel, for the more readj|2 
persuasion of the people, Dryden shaped in his "Ab 
salom and Achitophel" keen satire in verse as a poli 
tical pamphlet on the vital question of the day. Fac 
tion he suggested had been heated by outcry over th( 
feigned Popish Plot, Shaftesbury (Achitophel) ha(f( 
taken advantage of this to stir Protestant passion anc 
persuade Monmouth (Absalom) to rebellion against hinft; 
father. Who were the heads of the rebellion? Whai^ 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 6g 

lends had the king? Here opportunity is given for 
ignette sketches of leaders on either side. Among 
irious counsels comes that of the king. His enemies 
ad abused his clemency, but let them now 

"Beware the fury of a patient man. 
Law they require: let Law then show her face." 

Dryden's poem was published on the 1 7th of No- 
^mber 1681; on the 24th Law showed her face in a 
ay not desired by the king, for the grand jury ignored 
le bill of indictment against Shaftesbury and he was 
wed. But he left the country in 1682, to die in the 
)llowing year in the course of nature. His friend 
)hn Locke at the same time left England, which was 
len no very safe home for an active friend of liberty, 
oth went to Holland. Charles the Second died on 
le 6th of February 1685. His brother, the Duke of 
ork, succeeded as James the Second, and began his 
iign by going openly to mass. Li November of the 
ime year Louis XIV. in France revoked the Edict of 
antes, which had secured, in some places, to a limited 
xtent, freedom of worship for the Protestants. Although 
iquired to become Roman Catholics and forbidden 
) quit the country, many French Protestants went into 
xile. Not a few settled in England, where their 
descendants add to the strength of the English people. 
)hn Evelyn noted in his diary how the Bishop of 
'alence said that the victory over heresy in the Re- 
ocation of the Edict of Nantes was "but what was 
ished in England; and that God seemed to raise the 



70 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

French king to this power and magnanimous action's 
that he might be in a capacity to assist in doing thei^ 
same here." King James claimed a right to override 
law by dispensing with the Test Act, and in Apri 
1687 issued a Declaration of Liberty of Conscience ii 
England, suspending all religious oaths and tests 
This set dissenters free as well as Roman Catholics 
The first appearance in Literature of Daniel Defoe 
was as the writer of three pamphlets to warn the Dis 
senters, he being himself one, that when they sen 
addresses of thanks to the king for his repeal of penai 
laws, they thanked him for assuming to himself j 
right to override the law. Again was urged the limi 
of royal authority. In the same year 1687 Dryden 
who had become Roman Catholic, aided the king's purl 
pose of bringing about, if possible, a Roman Catholi 
reaction, by writing an argument in verse between thn 
milk white Hind, type of Catholicism, and the Panthe 
whose spots indicated the multitude of Protestant 
heresies and schisms. His object in speaking throug^ 
beasts, a device open enough to ridicule, was to with 
draw the argument as much as possible from its dail;| 
association with passionate strife of men, and so tj 
get quieter hearing. A very lively caricature, by Mai 
thew Prior and Charles Montague, in the manner c 
the Duke of Buckingham's Rehearsal, called "th 
Hind and Panther transversed to the Story of th 
Country Mouse and the City Mouse," cleverly seize< 
what in art was the weak point of Dryden's poen 
though for the end it had in view the fault gav* 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 71 

strength. Five^ears and a half before, when Dryden, 
relieving himself to be a Protestant, wrote the "Religio 
:.aici," his poem showed that he was Roman Catholic 
ilready. The theory of a Pope, whose absolute opinion 
ihall determine controversies and secure Unity of the 
,^ith as a bond of peace, is in the doctrine of the 
•Religio Laici that 

—after hearing what the Church can say, 
If still our Reason runs another way 
That private Reason 'tis more just to curb 
Than by disputes the public peace disturb. 
For points obscure are of small use to learn: 
But common quiet is mankind's concern. 

In April 1688 James II. issued again his Declaration 
of Indulgence, and in May he ordered it to be read 
in all Churches. The Archbishop of Canterbury and 
six bishops, one of them Thomas Ken, the author of 
an Evening Hymn still in wide use throughout Eng- 
land, sent to the King a petition which pointed out that 
the Declaration was "founded upon such a dispensing 
power as hath been often declared illegal in Parlia- 
ment." The Petition was hawked about London, where 
the Declaration was read only in four churches. The 
bishops were tried for libel and acquitted. The King 
had a camp at Hounslow for the maintenance of his 
authority, but the soldiers in camp joined the shouts 
of the people at the acquittal of the seven bishops. 
On the day of the acquittal, June 30th 1688, a mes- 
senger was sent to invite William of Orange, whose 
fleet entered Torbay on the anniversary of Gunpowder 



72 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

Plot. On the i gth of December the Prince of Orange 
held a Court at St. James's. James the Second tookl 
shelter with the King of France , and was declared to 
have abdicated. In February 1689 William and Mary< 
became King and Queen of England, accepting with 
the crown those definite limitations of authority which 
were afterwards embodied in the Bill of Rights. .i 

If the friends of an absolute authority were de- 
feated, their opinions were not changed. Dryden gave 
up his office of Poet Laureate by refusing to take 
the required oaths upon its renewal under a new 
sovereign. King William was loyal to the principles 
of the English Revolution, but he drew England into 
his continental wars; and England entered into themi| 
the more willingly because they struck at Louis XIV. I 
Thousands of Englishmen who would have found it< 
hard to understand the technical grounds of foreign^ 
war under William III. and Anne, were content to 
strike at the power of the King of France, because his -^ 
strength might be against the liberties of England. 
Even at home there was need of watchfulness. John i 
Locke returned to England in the ship that brought! 
Queen Mary, and together with the Revolution came 
at once a fit interpretation of its meaning. In 1689 
and 1690 Locke produced "a Letter concerning Tolera- 
tion in Religion," and maintained his positions against 
attack; he also published "Two Treatises of Govern- 
ment," in one of which he demolished Filmer's theory 
of the divine origin of absolute authority, and in the 
other he set up the true theory of Civil Government. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 73 

He published also in 1690 his "Essay concerning Hu- 
man Understanding," of which the purpose was to 
persuade men of the limits of the knowable and win 
them from the waste of strength upon vain argument 
over questions which no man could determine. Locke 
was one of the men of science to whose energies new 
force had been given since the days of Francis Bacon. 
The continued energy is indicated by the fact that 
1687, the year of James the Second's Declaration of 
Indulgence, was the year in which Isaac Newton 
published his "Principia," which included the demon- 
stration of his theory of gravitation. Locke had been 
associated with the group of scientific men at Oxford, 
and out of inclination towards useful science, had 
made physic his profession. But the times bred 
thought as to the constitution of a state. Lord Shaftes- 
bury, when Lord Ashley, had been drawn towards 
Locke by the wisdom of his political reasonings, and 
had assisted in determining the bent of his scientific 
study towards the constitution of society. Then Locke's 
writings were of Civil and Religious Liberty, of Educa- 
tion, including care of health, of the conservation of 
intellectual energy, so that it might be spent only 
upon useful discussion, and upon the maintenance of 
Christianity by taking it directly from its source, 
without reference to the vain efforts of later dis- 
putants to define what lies beyond the bounds of 
human knowledge. Locke, who was deeply religious, 
taught that man's senses are the gates by which all 
human knowledge enters, and that we cannot form a 



74 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

conception of anything that lies wholly outside the 
range of our experience. Matters of faith, he said, are 
above reason, not opposed to reason; we can have no 
higher assurance of truth than the Word of God. 
Having, therefore, convinced ourselves by reason of 
the authority of the book from which we draw our 
religion, we take simply its teaching upon spiritual 
things, and rest upon that, as sufficient. We pass the 
bounds of human understanding when we cumber 
revealed truth with definitions of our own. 

At the beginning of William the Third's reign 
Locke's argument for Toleration in Religion which 
time and experience have now taught almost all 
Englishmen to take as matter of course, was distinctly 
opposed, on the old ground that it destroyed Unity of 
the Church and opened the door to heresy and schism. 
The truth was not yet learned that uniformity of 
opinion is unattainable, and that the Church of a free 
people cannot comprehend the nation unless it allow 
room for wide varieties in critical opinion. If we can 
be content with bringing all into one brotherhood by 
maintenance of the one spirit of religion, we may 
not only bind a nation, but bind also the nations 
into one. 

James the Second had persecuted the Scotch 
Covenanters, keen Puritans bitterly hostile to Catho- 
licism. Opponents of the King's claims to authority 
were paired with the Scotch Covenanters, who fed on 
whig, sour whey, and so they were dubbed Whigs. 
The Irish were Roman Catholics, and among the Irish 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 75 

there were notorious thieves called tories; Tories there- 
fore, became the return nickname for the King's friends 
as supporters of a Roman Catholic reaction and the 
King's exemption from control of law. In those days 
a man was Whig or Tory as he had good or ill will 
to the settlement made by the English Revolution. 
The stumble of his horse that caused William the 
Third's death was ascribed to a mole's breaking of 
the soil. The mole was afterwards toasted by those 
who desired a second restoration of the Stuarts. Thus 
Sir Walter Scott made in his "Waverley" the Laird 
of Balmawhipple call for a bumper "to the little gen- 
tleman in black who did such service in 1702, and 
may the White Horse" (of the House of Hanover) 
"break his neck over a mound of his making." 

[Shakespeare's Plays, Milton's Poems, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's 
Progress" are in the Tauchnitz Collection of British Authors. 
Volume 500, entitled "Five Centuries of the English Language 
and Literature," includes pieces from Wiclif, Chaucer, Sir Thomas 
JNIore, Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Locke.] 



76 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 



CHAPTER III. 
FROM THE REIGN OF ANNE TO THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 

Queen Anne came to the English throne in March 
1702 at the age of thirty seven, a well meaning wo- 
man, kindly, religious, and with a mind somewhat en- 
feebled by domestic grief. On the 29th of July 1700 
she had lost, in the Duke of Gloucester, the only 
child surviving of seventeen that had been born. She 
had then a close friendship with Marlborough's wife, 
calling herself in their correspondence Mrs. Morley, 
and Lady Marlborough Mrs. Freeman. After the 
death of her last child her signature changed from 
"Your faithful Morley" to "Your poor unfortunate 
faithful Morley." Devoted to the English Church and 
its ecclesiastical system, Anne would not take the 
sacrament before the clergy, and those first fruits and 
tenths which had of old time been yielded to the 
Pope and which were added by Henry VIII. to the 
Crown revenue, Queen Anne, on the 6th of February, 
1704, which was her birthday and also a Sunday, 
gave as a birthday offering to the poorer clergy of 
the Church. The fund is still so applied, under the 
name of Queen Anne's Bounty. It may be taken as 
another indication of the character of Queen Anne, 
that she gave out of her first year's civil list a hundred 
thousand pounds to relieve burdens of the people. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 77 

About six months before the death of William III, 
Anne's father, James IL, had died in France, and 
Louis XIV. defied William by acknowledging the son 
of James II. King of England. This act sounded 
again a note of war, and Anne's first speech in Par- 
liament maintained war. It also repeated a recom- 
mendation of Union between England and Scotland; 
which after much difficult negotiation was finally ar- 
ranged in July 1706, to date from the ist of May 
1707, Great Britain being chosen as the name for the 
United country. 

Queen Anne had no ill will to her own family; the 
bias of her mind was towards authority, and through 
her devotion to the established Church she could per- 
haps be made an instrument in the hands of those 
who were unfriendly to the settlement made by the 
Revolution. But the ways of politicians on both sides 
had in those days become very crooked. What little 
there was of a highminded statesmanship was often 
lost among lowthoughted cares of a political life in 
which few men kept to a straight path, subordinating 
passion and ambition to the public good. The great 
currents of opinion were still flowing in accordance 
with a fixed natural law, but they struck on mudbanks 
with which the whole stream was becoming choked, 
and were thus for a time deflected and defiled. 

The first zeal of the Tories was for a renewal of 
strong war against dissent. This was in right ac- 
cordance with the belief still prevalent that the de- 
sired Unity of the Church was to be secured by a 



78 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

common agreement upon points of discipline and 
doctrine. To this form of zeal, Defoe opposed in 1702 
an ironical reduction to absurdity of the policy of 
persecution, called "the Shortest Way with the Dissen- 
ters." He was condemned to imprisonment and set 
in the pillory on each of the last three days of July 
1703. "A Hymn to the Pillory," which he wrote for 
distribution to the crowd, caught easily the ears and 
understandings of the people. The flowergirls were 
about, and Defoe's pillory was strewn with roses. 
Defoe's pillory is a new starting point for English 
Literature. With Defoe especially it may be said that 
we have the beginning of a form of literature written 
with the desire to reach all readers. The French 
critical influence with its purblind classicism, its servi- 
tude to forms, its false image of dignity and its low 
dread of the simplicity which it accounted "low," was 
still cherished with much solemn regard. From that 
which called itself polite society the old large and 
healthy life seemed to be gone. Not out of the 
formalism of French critics, but out of the national 
life came health. Defoe went from his pillory to 
prison where his durance was not very strict, and 
began to issue on the igth of February 1704 his 
journal known as the "Review," which came out twice 
a week until 1705, and then three times a week 
till 1 7 13, when Anne's reign was drawing to a close. 
It was the first journal in England that gave thought- 
ful comment upon public affairs. In this paper Defoe 
kept guard upon the constitution, and a supplement to 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 79 

it, in which he dealt by slight machinery of a club 
with questions of minor morals, must have suggested 
to Richard Steele his "Tatler." 

Jonathan Swift published in 1704 his "Battle of 
the Books," based on a small controversy born of a 
small reaction against dead worship of the dead, with 
not much life in the argument on either side. It 
includes the pleasant dialogue between the spider and 
the bee, in w^hich the spider is the modern, and the 
bee the ancient, who seeks only what is beautiful in 
nature to draw from it, as the bee seeks honey and wax, 
"the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and 
light." "A Tale of a Tub," published by Swift in 
the same volume, was, in the interest of Christian 
charity, a witty satire on the controversies that caused 
Roman Catholic, English churchman and Dissenter, 
Peter, Martin and Jack, to damage and soil the coats, 
- — clothing of righteousness, — their Father gave them. 
It was a plea for common fellowship and good will, 
in which Martin fared better than Peter and Jack, 
while each might think himself ill treated. Addison 
delighted in Swift's wit, but Queen Anne thought that 
the book ought not to have been written by a clergy- 
man. Swift's genius was more robust than Addison's. 
John Forster in his fragment of Swift's life has given 
the lines of "Baucis and Philemon" as Swift originally 
wrote them. Addison persuaded Swift to much altera- 
tion. We may now compare the first draft with the 
revision, and see very distinctly where there was 
strength lost by Swift's acceptance of wrong principles 



So A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

of criticism then in fashion. While Swift was in Lon- 
don, he amused the town, at the beginning of the 
year 1708, with an attempt to bring into disrepute 
the astrological almanacs that fostered superstition. 
Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff, who professed 
himself to be indeed an astrologer, he predicted the 
day of the death of one of the chief makers of these 
almanacs, John Partridge. When the day was passed. 
Partridge's death was described in another pamphlet. 
Richard Steele began his "Tatler" in 1709, when 
this joke was still fresh, and Isaac Bickerstaff the 
astrologer thus came to be a central figure in that 
series of essays. The success of "the Tatler," which 
was wholly designed by Steele, established the period- 
ical essay as a force in literature. "The Tatler" 
was a penny paper that appeared three times a week. 
When its success was already assured, Addison con- 
tributed, and when 271 numbers had been published, 
Steele dropped "the Tatler" to revive it a few weeks 
later, under a new name, "the Spectator," as a daily 
essay. He was still the sole proprietor and editor, 
but his friend Addison helped actively. By the 
founding of these papers Steele gave Addison to 
English Literature. The design of Steele in Tatler 
and Spectator, which he brought his friend Addison 
to share, was by issue of short unassuming essays, 
untouched by the bitterness of political controversy, to 
assist in restoring to English society the wholesome 
tone lost in the days of Charles the Second. The 
fashion of speech that degraded womanhood, and 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 8 I 

affected ridicule of marriage Steele battled against 
with his kindly wit. One of the most pathetic of the 
sketches in "the Tatler" was a picture of a happy home, 
and of the void made by the loss of wife and mother. 
The weak vanities that had been fostered in women 
by a low form of worship, Steele and Addison touched 
with the kindliest of satire. The foppish affectation 
of profanity and other stains upon the manners of 
the day, were not overlooked, and in Steele's writing 
there was an earnest effort to break down the con- 
ventional opinion that supported duelling. When the 
political movements of Queen Anne's reign led at last 
to question whether the party of reaction might not 
succeed in its schemes for a reversal of the settlement 
of the succession after the Queen's death, Steele 
would no longer bind himself to shut out political 
discussion from his papers. He brought "the Spec- 
tator" to an end, established in its place "the 
Guardian," went on to "the Englishman" and by a 
pamphlet on "the Crisis" exposed himself to the 
wj:ath of a Tory House of Commons. But there really 
was at that time a danger to the country, clear 
enough to all who read in any detail the records of 
Anne's reign. The queen's unexpected death by 
apoplexy on the ist of August 17 14 deprived plotters 
of time for the maturing of their plans. Steele's 
pamphlet against attempts to undermine the Con- 
stitution, for which he was expelled from a Tory 
House of Commons, was submitted to the criticism of 
Addison and others before publication. It had for its 

Of Eftglish Literature . O 



82 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

sole object to save Englishmen from danger of ignor- 
ance upon a vital question, by setting forth, with exact 
citation of documents, what was meant by the English 
Constitution and what was the settlement, and the 
purpose of the settlement of the succession to the 
Crown. When Addison wrote of Steele's plain speak- 
ing in those critical times "I am in a thousand troubles 
for poor Dick, and wish his zeal for the public may 
not be ruinous to himself," he spoke with his own natu- 
ral timidity, and indicated a relation between public 
and private interests that Steele never could have re- 
cognized. Wherever Steele and Addison were fellow- 
workers, Steele, whose whole heart was his friend's, 
gave to his friend alone the praise. But of the two i 
characters Steele's was the more vigorous, and Addison i 
climbed highest when he followed where Steele led. 

Addison's sensitive nature gave refinement to his 
humour, and delicacy to his sense of the charm of 
style. He was the best critic of his day, and the more : 
readily accepted because he shared to some extent,, 
conventional opinions of his time. He enjoyed " Ch^vy 
Chase" and "the Babes in the Wood," and did so for 
good human reasons. But when he tried in Spectator i 
papers to show cause for his enjoyment, it was by sug- 
gesting resemblances to Horace and Vergil. There are 
passages in Addison's criticisms of "Paradise Lost" by 
which he made Spectator papers a means of rescuing 
Milton from the prejudices of the day, in which the pre- 
judices themselves govern his argument; and what we 
might now look upon as the weak part of his criticism, 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 83 

vas in his own time a safeguard to his reputation. But 
here was nothing conventional in Addison's tastes. 
The sympathetic insight of genius and the religious 
lepths of character caused him to fasten only on that 
vhich was good ; all that could be affected by conven- 
ion was his manner of accounting critically for his 
•ight impressions. His judgment could be warped also 
Dy kindly feeling when the work of a friend like 
'\.mbrose Philips was in question. 

Alexander Pope was twenty three years old in 1 7 ii 
A'hen the Spectator was appearing. In that year he 
:)ublished his poem called "An Essay on Criticism," 
U'ritten two years earlier. It followed the fashion of 
:ritical France in writing about writing, or rather, since 
:ts theme was criticism, in writing about writing about 
ivriting. But though of the school of Boileau, and 
ivritten, of course, in couplets after the French style 
3f versification which was already overrunning English 
Literature, Pope's "Essay on Criticism" had an English 
ring. It was goodnatured, too, and taught the cen- 
sorious that 

Good nature and good sense must ever join; 
To err is human, to forgive divine. 

In the "Rape of the Lock" Pope, at the close of 
Queen Anne's reign, amused society with a mock heroic 
that again was in the school of Boileau, for it might 
aever have been written had not Boileau written "Le 
Lutrin." But in the charm of style Pope here excelled 
his master. Though a few touches of English earnest- 

6* 



$4 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

ness are In the treatment of a frivolous theme, as in 
the furnishing of Belinda's toilet table with " Puffs, ^ 
powders, patches, Bibles, billets doux/' there is nothing; 
to cloud the playfulness of satire upon a fashionable i 
world exceeding busy about nothing. 

But there was now rising in Europe another mood 
than that of light trifling with triflers. Society ins 
England was little helped by the personal influence of 
the two first Kings of the House of Hanover who, after' 
Queen Anne's death, duly assured the Protestant suc- 
cession to the English throne. In France the social 
corruption and the miseries of the people had kept- 
pace together. The resources of an absolute dominions 
had been strained cruelly to pay for triumphs and* 
calamities of war. The people, as Voltaire said, weret 
dying to the sound of Te Deums. The death of 
Louis XIV. followed not long after that of Queeni 
Anne. In 1 7 1 5 Louis XV. came to the French thrones 
as a child, and from 17 15 to 1726 there was thei 
Regency of the Duke of Orleans. It is hard to sayj 
whether the profligacy and meanness of French fashion^ 
able life was at its worst under the Regency or during 
the personal reign of the King, which lasted until 
1774 and developed, among those who dreamed oii 
better things, a deep contempt for the corruptions ofi 
what they supposed to be an overcivilized society.i 
There was an excess of formal outward polish to supply; 
the place of frank sincerity, and there was the self-] 
satisfaction of men who had no conception of the use' 
of life. Pierre Bayle, who had keen reason to know) 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 85 

le baseness of the dragonnades in favour of religion, 
onfounded religion itself with the degradation of it into 
liserable forms, and looking out upon the evils of 
Dciety, asked whether a just God could have created 
iich a world as he then saw. In 1695-6 he published 
Holland his "Dictionnaire Historique," in which 
ves of men were told by an acute and honest scholar 
ith continual suggestion of doubt whether the actual 
tate of Man, and even the course of Nature, did not 
lake faith in the existence of a God impossible. This 
ork, which was translated into English in 17 11, and 
)r its abundance of curious and suggestive matter 
t^as a favourite with the religious Addison, may be 
lonveniently taken as a starting point for the form of 
bepticism developed throughout Europe, but especially 
1 France, during the eighteenth century. It was not 
ow as in Milton's time, a question of the justice or 
ijustice involved in certain theological doctrines, as 
f election or predestination, but it struck deeper, and 
)oking out upon the world asked boldly, Can this be 
world that a just God is governing? Bayle died in 
706, and in 17 10 the philosopher Leibnitz, writing 
1 Paris, published in French his "Theodicee," which 
ttempted answer to Bayle's questioning. He began 
dth the suggestion that Bayle is now in heaven; 
scaped from this world in which he could see only a 
art of the divine scheme, and that imperfectly, he is 
here he may, perhaps, look out upon the whole and 
oubt no more. This pointed to the main argument 
f Leibnitz, that our limited view makes us imperfect; 



86 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

judges of the ways of God. We cannot know what isij 
man's place in the Universe, nor on this earth can we; 
see more than a small part of the whole scheme ofi 
creation. In what we can see, Leibnitz argued, we 
can find justice and wisdom, doubts begin where oun 
light fails. But the patent shams and unrealities of' 
that which called itself the polite life of the time — 
though to us they are now, both in France and England,! 
most easily traceable to their causes — disheartened: 
many earnest men, especially the young. In 1706: 
Bernard Mandeville published in England a little fable^; 
in five hundred lines of verse entitled "The Grumbling. 
Hive or the Knaves turned Honest." Bees in a hive, 
he said, are like men in society, they have trades andJ 
professions as men have, and in a certain hive everyj 
bee became so painfully conscious of the knavery of 
all his neighbours, that they resolved to becometj 
honest. When they did so, there was no more need 
for lawyers, because there was no injustice to guard! 
against; no need for doctors, because there was am 
end of ways of life and ways of eating that producedii 
disease; no need of merchants, because there was no( 
demand for foreign luxuries. Trades based upon 
waste and folly disappeared, and thus with honest); 
came poverty. The standing army was put down, be- 
cause the honest hive was capable of no aggressive 
war. It was attacked, as defenceless, by the bees oj 
other hives. Every bee then served as a volunteer. The 
enemies were driven back, but honesty had found iU 
way at last to such simplicity of life that the hive 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 87 

tself was judged to be unnecessary. The whole 
,5warm, therefore, flew back to its original home in a 
lollow tree. When we consider that the course of re- 
iction against evils of an artificial life was on its way 
to an emphatic maintenance of the innocence of the 
state of nature, the place of Bernard Mandeville's 
satire in the main current of European thought, 
already flowing towards a new Revolution, becomes 
very distinct. First annotated in 17 14, in 1723 "the 
Fable of the Bees" was reproduced, with a full prose 
commentary, in two volumes, enforcing the idea that 
civilization is based on the vices of mankind. 

Three years later, in November 1726, appeared 
Swift's "Gullivers Travels," a book by no means to 
be isolated from the rest of Literature as representing 
Sw^ift's personal and peculiar scorn of the meanness 
and corruption of human society. The voice of its 
time is in this book also, but had a more intense ex- 
pression through the genius and the character of Swift. 
To bring home to men the littleness of the lives about 
which they were meanly occupied. Swift used his vivid 
imagination in the shaping of a book of travels full of 
wonders as a fairy tale, but addressed by him to men 
rather than children. With Lemuel Gulliver among 
the Lilliputians, we see civilization in a baby show. 
Only change the size of men, and let an inch stand 
for a foot, and how trivial we seem in our own eyes. 
Reverse the glass, and imagine men and all that be- 
longs to them, and all their little pets and fumes, as 
they would be looked down upon by a race, say, twelve 



88 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

times taller, to do that we visit Brobdignag. If a few 
feet of size make so much difference in our power of 
discovering the smallness of that which we are apt to 
look upon as the chief work of life, how must our 
petty jealousies and ambitions, our glorying in stars 
and garters, seem to the angels who can look down 
from the height of heaven? In the voyage to Laputa 
we have satire on man's pride in his own knowledge, 
and in the voyage to the Houyhnhnms, where the 
innocent life of one of the lower animals is compared 
with the corrupt life of man calling himself civilized, 
the satire fiercely expresses what was then the grow- 
ing sense of evil in society. Rousseau was arguing a 
few years later that man is the worse for civilization; 
that the natural man, the noble savage, having no 
property and therefore no inducement to theft, and 
being in other ways without temptation to crime, lived 
a purer and a better life than the man warped by 
civilization. Swift made a like contrast when he placed 
man's artificial and dishonest life below the life of a 
horse. * 

Two or three years after the appearance of Gul- 
liver's Travels, one of the kindliest of poets, John 
Gay, wrote a satire on society less forcible but quite 
as fierce. His "Beggar's Opera," produced with very 
great success in January 1728, was full of under- 
suggestion that the ways of the great politicians were 
one with the Avays of thieves. A paper in "the Crafts- 

* Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 89 

man" at once boldly applied it all to actual life, and 
the refusal of permission to act the sequel, entitled 
"Polly," told how the official world had understood 
its satire. "Polly" was printed; and if in the Beggar's 
Opera one might enjoy the art without attending to 
the social satire, in "Polly" the satire is forced 
strongly on attention. Its whole plan is to place a 
picture of degraded civilization between pirates and 
savages, and show society upon a level with the 
pirates, or below them, and the natural man, the savage, 
far exalted above both. 

In the days of "Gulliver's Travels" and "the 
Beggar's Opera," and of Pope's attack on the small 
end of Literature in his "Dunciad," appeared in English 
poetry the first clear signs of a reviving sense of 
Nature. Within a few months of one another ap- 
peared Dyer's "Grongar Hill," Allan Ramsay's "Gentle 
Shepherd," and "Winter," the first published part of 
Thomson's "Seasons." "Grongar Hill" was a simple 
utterance of the sense of natural beauty during a 
walk up the low hill by the Towy at whose foot 
stands the house in which Dyer was born. The poet 
blends, as he should blend, human feeling with his 
poem so as to mark harmony between the world within 
man and the world without. He even escapes from 
the all pervading couplets of tensyllabled lines, to 
the old octosyllabic measure. Allan Ramsay, who be- 
gan life as a poor lad working on the banks of a 
leadmine, had a true songnote of his own, and the 
lyric parts are very pleasant in his pastoral play. 



go A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

In Thomson's "Seasons," the diction is Latin, rhe- 
torical; but no work of that day approached "the 
Seasons" in the fuhiess and variety of its expression 
of Nature in all her moods."^ If Thomson delights in 
sending his nouns abroad each with three Latin ad- 
jectives in attendance, the Latin adjectives give more 
than eye service; each helps to the exact expression 
of a thought. Through the whole poem there runs 
also a main thought summed up in the closing Hymn 

"These as they change, Ahiiighty Father, these 
Are but the varied god. " 

The whole work is shaped into a poet's answer to 
those who held that Nature denied God. Thomson's 
"Hymn of the Seasons" was written in 1728. In 
1732 Pope published the first part of his "Essay on 
Man," containing the first two epistles, the third 
epistle followed in 1733, the fourth in 1734, and in 
1738 he summed up that work with his "Universal 
Prayer." Pope wrote in Queen Anne's reign the 
"Essay on Criticism" and "Rape of the Lock." In 
the reign . of George I. he made money by following 
the classical fashion with a translation of Homer. In 
the reign of George II. years were ripening his own 
sense of life, and the reaction against frivolity and 
formalism had carried the course of Literature beyond 
the shallows. There was a waste of marsh on either 
side, but the main stream rolled through it now as a 

* Thomson's Poetical Works are in the Taiichnitz Collection. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. QI 

deep river under leaden skies. Pope's writing in this 
part of his life deals with the larger problem of 
society.* His "Essay on Man" was a distinct effort 
to meet in his own way the doubts that had been 
spreading since the time of Bayle. His argument was 
that of Leibnitz's Theodicee, a book he had not read. 
It had entered into daily reasonings of men, and 
Pope may very well have owed his argument to Leib- 
nitz without having taken it directly from him. In 
his reasoning for evidence of divine wisdom even in 
the passions and the selfishness of man, he framed 
a little scheme of his own. His Epistles and Satires 
he regarded as so many expressions of his argument 
reduced from theory to practice. Two years after 
Pope had published his fourth Epistle and two years 
before he printed his Universal Prayer, Joseph Butler, 
in 1736, furnished his very different contribution to 
the same argument, in a book studied to this day at 
the English Universities, arguing the "Analogy of 
Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution 
and Course of Nature." Two years after its publica- 
tion Butler w^as made a bishop. 

In those days John Wesley at Oxford, aided by 
his brother Charles, was preparing to strike a more 
effectual blow against doubts based upon the insin- 
cerities of man. When Swift published "Gulliver's 
Travels" John Wesley, twenty three years old, ob- 
tained his Fellowship at Lincoln College Oxford. His 

* Pope's Select Poetical Works are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



92 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

reaction against formalism in religion was in the 
direction of sincerity. He and his brother persuaded 
some of their fellow students to join them in living 
before the world, fearless of its conventions, as well as 
they could, the Christian life as Christ had taught it. 
They were a society at first of fifteen students laughed 
at as "the Godly Club," "the Bible moths," and by a 
name that stuck to them, as "Methodists." They 
visited the sick and the prisoners, and strove to 
"recover the image of God." George Whitefield, 
who went as a poor servitor to Pembroke College, was 
admitted of their number. Wesley's growing influence 
upon men from that time forth bore witness to the 
power of a deep sincerity. He died at the age of 
eighty eight, after sixty five years of ministration. For 
more than fifty years he preached two, three or four 
sermons a day, and travelled about four thousand five 
hundred miles in each year, carrying his enthusiasm 
from place to place. What he asked of his hearers 
was that they would awake and arise, put aside all 
idle formalism, and join themselves to his society, not 
by pledging themselves to particular doctrinal opinions, 
but by a resolve as far as possible to live really 
the Christian life, and avoid every custom of the world 
that was in conflict with it. George Whitefield, who 
began his work under the influence of Wesley, spread 
similar teaching, with a little more regard to doctrine, 
preaching commonly, like Wesley, in the open air, to 
audiences that might be reckoned by tens of thousands. 
When John Wesley died, he left an organized religious 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 93 

society of 140,000 members, in Britain and America. 
True it is that "the effectual fervent prayer of a 
righteous man availeth much." This great effort to 
restore sincerity to the religion of the country, — which 
no fault of Wesley's has placed outside the established 
Church of England — had its rise in one of the great 
centres of English thought, the University of Oxford. 

While the battle for a freer because truer life was 
thus being fought in England, evidence was every- 
where of the sickness of mind due to an unwholesome 
condition of society. As the body sickens in confine- 
ment, so may the mind. There is more evidence of 
hypochondria and actual insanity among writers in 
the eighteenth century than at any other time. This 
was the case probably among men of all occupations. 
Healthy men w^ere touched with the gloom of bondage. 
Robert Blair's poem on "the Grave" published in 1743, 
dwells far more on the mortality within the church- 
yard than upon the spiritual life beyond. Its most 
vigorous passage paints fear of the churchyard ghost. 
Edv/ard Young published in 1742-3 his "Night 
Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality," oc- 
casioned by the death of a married stepdaughter in 
1736, of her husband in 1740, and of his own wife 
in 1 74 1. The gloom in it was implied by the name 
of its sequel "The Consolation," but the note of melan- 
choly runs through all. There is less gloom in Gray's 
"Elegy in a Country Churchyard" completed a few years 
later, but the sickness of the times was felt also by 
Gray. In his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton 



94 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

College," the manner of the musing is characteristic. 
Now, a crowd of boys in a playground would suggest 
to a moralist fresh energies of a generation that shall 
carry on the labour of the present. To Gray it sug- 
gested nothing but the miseries in store for them 
when they should be men: 

Alas, regardless of their doom 
The little victims play. 

William Collins, whose Odes were published in 1747, 
died insane. Samuel Johnson, with a scrofulous taint 
of the blood that throughout his life threatened in- 
sanity, battled against poverty without and disease 
within. His firm resolve and his strong hold upon 
religion gave him mastery, and he came to be the 
main support of the best intellectual life of his time. 
No thought was healthier than his of the strong soul 
that overcame in daily combat the infirmities of bodily 
disease. When the wit and fashion of London gathered 
at last around the shambling shortsighted man, still 
destitute of the world's wealth, whose features had 
been made harsh, and manners rudely abrupt, by the 
physical condition over which in all essentials he was 
master, his fearless sincerity gave to his life a grandeur 
that men felt. He taught others to look, like himself, 
through all the fleeting accidents of life to that in 
which a man can really live, and there were none 
who came to know him without learning how pure a 
spring of love and tenderness kept the whole nature 
fresh within. Firmly attached to the established Church, 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 95 

Johnson was a stout Tory on the religious side of his 
life and held the First Georges in such contempt as, 
it may be said, their lives had duly earned for them. 
But no delusions of party feeling dimmed his sense of 
human brotherhood, and of the large interests of 
humanity. Negro slavery was to his mind so gross a 
wrong that he startled a polite company one day with 
a toast "to the next Insurrection of the Blacks." The 
political corruption of his time caused Johnson in his 
Dictionary, which appeared in 1755, to define "Pen- 
sion" as "a grant made to any one without an equi- 
valent," and "Pensioner" as "a slave of state, hired 
by a stipend to obey his master." In 1760, when he 
was fifty two years old, his friends, holding it un- 
endurable that one who had served England so well 
should live in poverty, obtained a pension for him of 
£300 a year. When told what had been done, he 
took a day for reflection, and then accepted. But his 
acts showed in what spirit he took the grant. For 
some of the money wasted yearly in political corrup- 
tion he w^ould find a better use. He sheltered in his 
home five other persons who deserved help and with- 
out it would have sunk to ruin. Johnson lived with 
them as his friends, respected them, secured for them 
respect. One was a negro servant of a friend who 
could no longer keep him. Johnson took charge of 
him and he was known as Dr. Johnson's man, but 
Johnson gave him liberal education, wrote to him as 
"Dear Francis," subscribing "Yours affectionately," and 
through him made living protest against the notion 



96 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

that man can be made other than man by the colour 
of his • skin. Johnson's pension sustained five lives and 
gave him means of occasional help to sufferers whom 
he came near. Once when he found a ruined woman 
who had fainted in the streets he took her up on his | 
broad back, carried her to his home, and made what 
effort he could to save her. The best life of the time, \ 
the life that was struggling to lift the age above its j 
petty formalisms to a large sense of what men really 
live for, breathed and moved in Johnson. He was; 
sixty nine years old Avhen he began, and seventy three ' 
when he completed, in 1781, his "Lives of the Poets." 
When the booksellers asked him to write them for an 
edition of the poets then in preparation and requested 
him to name his price, he asked only £200. They 
gave him more , though still less than the work was ; 
worth, but when the insufficient payment was suggested 
to him as a matter of complaint, he answered, "No, 
it is not that they gave me too little, but that I gave 
them too much." * He was no grumbler himself, and 
no encourager of idle grumbling. "I hate," he said,, 
" a complainer." It was characteristic of French critical 
influence that "the Poets" according to the booksellers, , 
that is to say, the saleable Poets, all wrote after the • 
reign of Queen Elizabeth. Johnson's power had grown 
with the time, and he so far shared the reaction 
against formalism in his style , that the English of his 



* Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" are in two volumes of the 
Tauchnitz Collection. 



OF ENGLISH TJTERATURE. 



97 



"Lives of the Poets" differs distinctly from the English 
of his "Rambler." In these latter days Johnson said 
of Robertson the historian, "If his style is bad, that is, 
too big words and too many of them, I am afraid he 
caught it of me." Johnson died in December 1784, 
four or five years before the fall of the Bastille. Wil- 
liam Wordsworth was a boy of fourteen when John- 
son died, and William Cowper was then writing his 
"Task." 

If we glance at the historians we still find the 
drift of the time marked by the course of English 
Literature. There had been imperial annals, de- 
veloped after the invention of printing from the fa- 
miliar form of the monastic chronicle; there had been 
also histories of special periods, like Bacon's "Histoiy 
of the Reign of Henry the Seventh" or Clarendon's "His- 
tory of the Rebellion;" but there had been no attempt 
to trace cause and effect through the whole sequence 
of English history. David Hume, who began his 
literary life in 1738, at the age of 27, with a "Treatise 
on Human Nature," and in his subsequent writings on 
Politics and the Principles of Morals had blended the 
sceptical spirit of the time with clear discussion of 
the chief problems of life, was made in 1 7 5 2 Librarian 
to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. Access to 
books suggested to him the writing of what was first 
planned as a suggestive special history. A quarto volume 
on the reigns of James I. and Charles L appeared 
in 1745. It was decried and neglected. Only forty 
five copies were sold in a twelvemonth. It was not 

Of English Liierniure. 7 



98 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

Hume's first experience of neglect, but he always had 
worked on, unchecked by apparent failure. Having 
published in the intervening year a "Natural History 
of Religion," Hume continued his English History in 
1756 from the Death of Charles I. to the Revolution. 
In 1759 he prefixed to his published work a History 
of the House of Tudor, and in 1761 he stepped farther 
back, and thus completed the first "History of Eng- 
land" that attempted to bring all into one narrative, 
told throughout from the writer's point of view with a 
philosophical sense of the sequence of events. With 
the scepticism of the reaction yet more marked, and 
a warmth of imagination, wanting in Hume, to 
give life to a style still dignified with Latin English 
Edward Gibbon, in the year of Hume's death, 1776, 
published the first volume of his "Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire." The last volume was published a year 
before the French Revolution. Volney's "Ruins of Em- 
pires" was published in France in September 1791, and 
Gibbon's theme was suggested to him by the decrepi- 
tude of the French monarchy, and the vague general 
sense of corrupt governments upon the road to ruin. 
Among the ruins of the Capitol it had occurred to 
him that the story of the fall of the great power of 
Rome would tend to show what makes the weakness 
and the strength of states. 

Pictures of individual life were at the same time 
developed by the novelists, who first became in the 
eighteenth century a power in Literature. Defoe 
broke this new ground with his "Robinson Crusoe" in 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 99 

17 19, which did not call itself a novel, but was an 
exact imitation of a book of Voyage and Adventure. 
In the loneliness of Crusoe on his island Defoe ex- 
pressed his own sense of political isolation. The in- 
terest in the book lies in its picture of self-reliance 
tempered with religious faith.* Defoe's other novels 
also imitated other forms of literature, for vivid ex- 
pression of life as it really is. The example set by 
his "Robinson Crusoe" spread to Germany, and gave 
rise there to many imitations. Then followed in 1726 
"Gulliver's Travels." Pastoral heroic French romances 
kept the field as novels proper until Richardson, 
Fielding and Smollett first gave dignity to the novel 
as a distinct form of English Literature upon which 
the highest genius may be wisely spent. Richardson 
began in 1741 with his "Pamela," which attached con- 
ventional notions of dignity by giving the name of a 
romance heroine to a servant girl Pamela Andrews. 
Richardson, who was not himself free from all pre- 
judices of his day, rewarded virtue in his Pamela by 
giving her for husband a rascal who happened also 
to be the Squire. Henry Fielding was prompted to 
ridicule this weak point in a book professing to ad- 
vance morality, and began to write adventures of 
Pamela's brother Joseph, as a jest on hers. But having 
begun to Avrite a novel. Fielding found his strength. 
"Joseph Andrews," published in 1742, was very much 
more than a jest upon Pamela. Life was painted, 

* Defoe's ''Robinson Crusoe" is in the Tauchnitz Collection, 

7* 



lOO A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

follies of society were satirized, and in Parson Adams 
there was Fielding's picture of a Christian and a 
scholar who, having the soul of a gentleman, is brought 
by his simplicity into the most ridiculous positions, 
but whom nothing can make ridiculous. He is rolled 
in a pigsty and is not the less a gentleman, towards 
whom we feel kindly affection and a high respect. In 
1748 Richardson followed with his best novel, Clarissa 
Harlowe,* where a shrewd religious man's quick in- 
terest in life, kindliest feeling, and the giving of his 1 
whole mind to his work with a complete faith in his 
own creation, enabled him to produce the effect of a j 
work of genius, without the aid of genius in pro- ■ 
ducing it. In 1749 Fielding also published his chief ^ 
novel, Tom Jones.* It was his chief novel because 
largest of design, an image of the world of man, and. 
in Tom Jones and Blifil of the right and the wrong 
way of taking life. Tom Jones errs much, but he is 
what he seems to be, and out of his own sincerity has 
faith in the sincerity of others. Blifil excels him in 
observance of the forms of worth, but he is insincere, 
and acts in the belief that, others being like himself, 
no man is to be trusted. The book breathes health. 
The convention of the time did not forbid a direct 
picturing of its evil; but the coarse scenes in Fielding's 
novels are given always for what they are, with no 
false gloss upon them. Whenever Tom Jones sins 



* Fielding's "Tomjones" and Richardson's " Clarissa Harlowe'"| 
are jn the Tauchnitz Collection. " 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 10 I 

against the purity of his love for Sophia his wrong 
doing is made in some way to part him from her, and 
when he pleads towards the close of the story, the 
difference between men and women, and the different 
codes of morality by which they are judged in society, 
Fielding makes Sophia answer, "I will never marry a 
man who is not as incapable as I am myself of making 
such a distinction." The charm of genius enters into 
the whole texture of thought in Fielding's novels. A 
[page of his is to a page of Richardson's as silk to 
sackcloth. In his next novel "Amelia" Fielding sought 
:o paint the excellence of womanhood. Everywhere 
tiis vigour is tempered with a kindly humour that 
:auses us to read,, seldom laughing, but always, as it 
kvere with an undersmile, in a good humour that 
yives ready entrance to the wisdom of the thought so 
ittered. There is no bitterness even when, in his 
ceen irony upon false estimates of human greatness, 
'Jonathan Wild the Great," a notorious thief and 
hiefcatcher, stands as a type of the Great Alexanders, 
is in Gay's "Beggar's Opera" Peachum and Locket 
vere meant to be taken for statesmen of the eigh- 
eenth century. The youngest of this group of 
lovelists, Tobias Smollett, produced his first novel, 

Roderick Random," in 1748, the year of Richard- 
ion's "Clarissa"; his last novel, "Humphrey Clinker," 
L few months before his death. He died in 1771. 
Smollett's novels were light-hearted pictures of life 
md character as they appeared to a quick witted ob- 

erver who, though he painted as an observer from 



102 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

outside, never missed the points that made a sketch 
of incident or character amusing* He was a hard- 
working man of letters. His continuation of Hume's- 
History of England into his own times ended with 
the year 1765, and was published in 1769. It had 
in its day a success as great as that obtained in ourt 
own day by Macaulay's History, but time has told' 
upon its reputation. 

Another novelist was Laurence Sterne whose] 
"Tristram Shandy," rich in playful wit, began to ap- 
pear in 1759. The last published volume of a book« 
that was not finished and had no aim or end beyond 
amusement, appeared in 1767. Sterne's "Sentimental 
Journey," published in 1768, the year of his death,! 
owes part of its character to the fact that it was: 
written a few years after the chief sentimental writ-j 
ings of Rousseau.** 

The reaction in France was advancing. The cor- 
ruption of Society was inveighed against by youngj 
philosophers, one of whom, Helvetius, said that if arui 
angel came from heaven to teach men to live reasons 
able lives, he would no more be listened to than the 
philosopher who was accused to the Athenian youths 
of pronouncing tarts to be unwholesome. Voltaire 
represented the revolt of the intellect against bondage 
of convention, and Rousseau the revolt of the emotions. 



* Smollett's ''Roderick Random," "Peregrine Pickle" and 
"Humphrey Clinker" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 

** Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" and "Sentimental Journey' 
are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. IO3 

Rousseau had rejected the positive idea of Duty, 
and taken Sensibility for rule of conduct. "The Heart 
is good," he said, "listen to it; suffer yourself to be 
led by Sensibility and you will never 'stray, or your 
strayings will be of a creditable sort." This outbreak 
of the emotional part of human nature after long 
suffering from the restraints of a cold formalism, had 
its form determined by Rousseau's genius and eloquence. 
In 1750 Rousseau obtained, by arguing against the 
benefits of civilization, the prize offered by the Aca- 
demy of Dijon for an essay on the origin of the 
inequality among men, and whether it is authorised 
by natural law. In arguing afterwards, with delight- 
ful shrewdness, against an advocate of civilization, 
Rousseau exalted man in a state of nature, traced still 
to overcivilization the corruption of mankind, and 
said, though he thought it a hard thing to say, that the 
savage on the banks of the Orinoco who discovered 
that by binding a board to the skull of an infant he 
could so flatten it as to repress the development of 
the brain was a benefactor to society. In 1761 Rous- 
seau represented life in action from his sentimental 
point of view in the "Nouvelle Heloise," in 1762 he 
published under the name of "Emile" his view of 
education, and in the same year his "Contrat Social," 
a scheme of society idealised in his own way from 
the principles of the English Revolution and the Dutch 
Declaration of Independence. This book had more in- 
fluence than any other publication on the views of men 
who endeavoured to shape in France an ideal Com- 



I04 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

monwealth after the fall of monarchy at the Revolution 
of 1789. 

In England as in France writers dwelt upon the 
inequalities among men. Goldsmith's "Traveller," 
published in 1764, glanced over Europe, saw in each 
country its blessing and its curse, and dwelt upon the 
contrast in England between luxury and poverty. The 
thought in the Traveller 

Have we not seen at Pleasure's lordly call 
The smiling, long frequented village fall? 

was fully developed afterwards, in the poem of "the 
Deserted Village;" but it is not to be overlooked that 
in the last lines of "the Traveller" Goldsmith pointed to 
a remedy for ills of life, not in political revolution, 
but in that development of the true life within each 
heart and home towards which we in the nineteenth 
century are labouring. This note was struck clearly 
by Goldsmith and by Cowper before it became the 
master note of Wordsworth's verse, and master thought 
of a succeeding generation. The like pathos and kindly 
satire against false sentiment in Goldsmith's "Vicar 
of Wakefield," published in 1766, caused that book to 
bring some of its own health to the mind even of 
young Goethe.* Moreover, if one Scotsman wrote "the 
Man of Feeling" another wrote in those days "the 
Wealth of Nations" and helped society by laying firm 



* Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," and his Poems and Plays 
are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. IO5 

foundations for the study of political economy. Adam 
Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was published in the 
same year as "the Vicar of Wakefield/' and four years 
after Rousseau's "Contrat Social." 

William Cowper, withdrawn from active life by 
the infirmity that caused, even in his calm country re- 
tirement, the gloom of insanity to fall upon his cheer- 
ful mind, knew the world and its stir only from afar. 
But he expressed in his "Task," published in 1785, 
the feeling caught by his sensitive mind from the 
sense of oppression that pervaded Europe. He blended 
with generous expression of the English love of liberty, 
his pictures of what seemed the decay of society, the 
conventions of the town and of the church, the unjust 
wars, cruelties of the slave trade, and exclaimed 

My ear is pained, 
My soul is sick, with every day's report 
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. 
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, 
It does not feel for man. 

He denounced the Bastille four years before its 
fall: 

Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts; 
Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair, 
That monarchs have supplied from age to age 
With music such as suits their sovereign ears, 
The sighs and groans of miserable men ! 
There's not an English heart that would not leap 
To hear that ye were fallen at last. 

The Bastille fell on the 14th of July 1789. "Liberty 
Fraternity, Equality" was the cry, and the hope of thou- 



106 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

sands of enthusiastic dreamers, whose feeling was that 
ascribed by Wordsworth to the Solitary in his early days, 

For, lo, the dread Bastille 
With all the chambers in its horrid towers, 
Fell to the ground; by violence overthrown 
Of indignation, and with shouts that drowned 
The crash it made in falling. From the wreck 
A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise, 
The appointed seat of equitable law 
And mild paternal sway. 

The political feeling of those times in England is 
illustrated throughout by the speeches and writings of 
Edmund Burke. At the age of about seven and twenty 
he published, in 1756, a satire on the French philo- 
sophical tendency to contrast the virtues of the natural 
man with the vices of a corrupt civilization. When 
the imperial policy of George III., and of those who called 
themselves the King's friends, was taxing the American 
colonies for the profit of England, and the colonists ob- 
jected to taxation by a Parliament in which they were 
not represented, Burke's rare ability was made known 
to the Marquis of Rockingham. He became Rock- 
ingham's private secretary in July 1765, at the time 
when Rockingham, becoming premier, had the great 
difficulty of the day to deal with. Burke was es- 
sentially conservative. He dreaded Revolution and all 
sudden violence of change. His policy in the American 
dispute aimed at the staying of the strife. You claim 
imperial right to tax; claim it, then, he said. The 
American colonists refuse to bear imperial taxation; 
then do not impose it. Satisfy yourselves with formal 



OF I'^NGT.ISH TJTERATURE. I07 

declaration of your right; and them, by not using it. 
That was the policy on which Rockingham acted. If 
the king and his friends had been wiser than they 
were, there would have been no war with the American 
colonies, no Declaration of Independence; no founding 
in the new world of a great English Republic to take 
large part in the building of man's future. The blind- 
ness of rulers was, in this case, like the blindness of 
rulers in the days before the English Revolution, only 
opening the way to better things. When cause and 
effect lie both before us in the remoter and the nearer 
past, we learn to look with Milton in calm of mind 
upon the darkest and most doubtful times, for even 
through the foolishness of man God's will is done. 
Burke pleaded for the American colonists, that he might 
avert violent change. But by the outbreak of the great 
French Revolution, not only was a violent change be- 
gun, but it was a change of the kind that he most 
dreaded. Idealists were making a clean sweep of 
government, law, and many of the most cherished 
traditions and beliefs of men, to build up all anew 
according to their fancies. The enthusiasm ran as 
fire, the neighbour's house burned, England might burn 
next. With passionate eloquence Burke warred against 
the French Revolution. Feelings like his prompted the 
part taken by England in the attempt to crush it out 
by force. War against French Revolution was the 
school in which Napoleon was bred, and after a short 
peace there followed war against Napoleon which lasted 
until Waterloo. 



I08 A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

There was no failure of the French Revolution that at 
the close of the last century represented over all Europe 
the revolt against forms of authority from which the 
life was gone. Failure was of the mistaken means, not 
of the aims. Thomas Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope," 
published in the last year of the eighteenth century, 
when its author was but a youth of twenty one or 
twenty two, was as the last word of the dying century 
to its successor, full of ardent expectation of such 
a future as wisdom of Greece or Rome never conceived. 

The man whom Rousseau and others had supposed 
to be overcivilized, was not half civilized. It would 
be overpraise of human society, even as it now is, to 
describe it as half civilized. But the hope of a high 
future was set by the young poet of hope against all 
the wrongs and cruelties that were about him in the 
world. I watch, he said, 

I watch the wheels of Nature's mazy plan 
And learn the future by the past of man. 

When William Wordsworth took his stand in the 
"Lyrical Ballads," published in 1798, against all insin- 
cerity of diction, and sought to draw from man the 
truest note in the great harmony of Nature, he felt, as 
every poet of that day felt keenly, the discords of life 
and "what man has made of man." 

Robert Burns, true poet of nature, published his first 
volume of poems at Kilmarnock in the autumn of 1786. 
In 1787 the fame of "the Ayrshire Ploughman" spread 
through England. Until his death in 1796 he poured 



OF ENGT.TSH LITERATURE. TOQ 

out natural song, often tinged deeply with the feeling 
of the time. He sent a couple of carronades as a pre- 
sent to the National Assembly.'^ 

Wordsworth's sense of what man has made of man 
caused him not only to be one of those Englishmen 
whose hearts leapt at the fall of the Bastille, but drew 
him in his youth into direct fellowship with the French 
Revolutionists. He too believed, in his inexperience, 
that a great effort of humanity might in a few years 
turn wrong into right. He shared the brightest dreams 
of the first days of such effort. 

Through this living interest in the great hope, and 
this participation in its energies, Wordsworth was first 
among all poets to read the riddle of the failure that 
caused many to despair.** That which had been sought 
was rightly sought. The great awakening to sense of a life 
for man far other than that which had bred impatience 
of its meanness, was a real awakening, from which the 
nations must not sink back into sleep. But Burke was 
right in his distrust of the means by which a regenera- 
tion was to be attained. A state can be no better 
than the citizens who are its substance. Transmute 
these. The process of their transmutation is slow, 
painfully slow; but the way is known, and it is the 
only way that can lead to a real civilization of the 
world. Here and there some man lives a noble life, 
wins honour from all, unless his work be such as be- 

* The Poems of Burns are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 
** Wordsworth's "Select Poetical Works" are in the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 



I lO A GLANCE AT THE PAST 

gets blindness of party strife, and he is remembered in 
story for his worthy deeds. Wordsworth asked boldly 
the question, 

Why is this glorious creature to be found 
One only in ten thousand? What one is 
Why may not millions be? 

Endeavour suddenly to change the characters of men 
has failed, but there remains a no less strenuous re- 
solve to attain that at which the Revolution aimed. 
Wordsworth himself in his "Excursion," published in 
1 8 1 4, which was a poetical expression of the problem 
of society as he then understood it, urged the duty of 
the state to provide education for every child born in 
the land, as a first condition of the shaping of good 
citizens. He held, and rightly held, that free Eng- 
land's place was still that of a leader among the 
nations, and that from her the light was to spread, by 
advance, through her, of a true culture. 

Even till the smallest habitable rock 
Beaten by lonely billows, hear the songs 
Of humanized society. 

And so we come to the motive force that directs all 
the best energies of England in the reign of Queen 
Victoria. 

We have seen already that when the minds of 
men are stirred about essentials, life finds its highest 
utterance, and Literature, the voice of life, is at its 
best. For this reason there was in England at the 
beginning of the Nineteenth Century a fresh develop- 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, I I I 

menl of power. The genius of Byron represented the 
whole passionate movement of the Revolutionary time, 
and most clearly expressed sympathy with the nations 
who desired to throw off tyranny and be themselves.* 
Shelley's poetry expressed the pure ideal of the Re- 
volution, the sense of what humanity should be and 
was not, resentment of all that was base, and con- 
fusion of the God whose true spirit of love and 
justice breathed on almost every page of Shelley's 
verse with an image of God that dishonoured Him, 
and was among the forms made to be broken. Keats 
had the revived sense of beauty in God's world, and 
expressed through it, in his fragment of "Hyperion," 
the aspiration of the time. As the old Titans gave 
place to the younger Gods, 

So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, 
A power more strong in beauty, born of us 
And fated to excel us. 

One aid to the work of our time has come from the 
dying out of prejudices that restrained women from 
writing. Jane Austen's novels all ai:)peared between 
1811 and 18 1 8, but there was an interval of fifteen 
years between the Avriting of the three first published 
and the three that followed. She painted such pictures 
of real life as she had seen as a girl in a quiet 
country parsonage. Like Wordsworth, she sought to 
show the charm that lies under the common things about 

* Byron's Poetical Works in 5 vols, and a volume of "Selections 
from Shelley" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



112 A GLANCE AT THE PAST. 

US, and with a fine feminine humour, under sentences 
clear, simple, and exactly fitted to expression of a 
shrewd good sense, she came nearer to Fielding than 
any novelist who wrote before the reign of Queen 
Victoria.* Miss Edge worth began novel writing in 
Ireland in the first years of the Nineteenth Century. 
She sketched the Irish character about her with a 
quick perception that tended everywhere to cor- 
rection of abuses and increase of kindly feeling. From 
her the greatest novelist of his time. Sir Walter Scott, 
said that he had the first impulse to write novels that 
painted Scottish character. With the higher genius 
of a poet colouring their kindly views of man and 
nature, Scott's novels then became for many minds a 
spring of health.** 

* Jane Austen's Novels are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 
** Sir Walter Scott's Novels and Poems are in the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 



( 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THOSE WHO WERE OLD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE REIGN; 
AND OF THE POETS, WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, LANDOR. 

After the death of William IV. at two o'clock in 
the morning on the 20th of June 1837, ^^^ niece 
Victoria Alexandrina, whose father died within the 
first year of her life, and who had been quietly edu- 
cated by her mother, became Queen of England. She 
had then just entered her nineteenth year. The dura- 
tion of that part of the Reign of Victoria which is a 
part of history at the time when this narrative is 
written, exactly corresponds with the forty four years 
and four months of the whole Reign of Elizabeth. 

Most of the great poets of the preceding time had 
passed away. Keats died in 1821; Shelley, in 1822; 
Byron, in 1824: but if they had lived, Keats would 
have been at the beginning of the reign only forty- 
one years old; Shelley, forty five; and Byron, forty- 
nine. Keats, indeed, was a year younger than Thomas 
Carlyle, with whose death this narrative closes. Sir 
Walter Scott had been dead nearly five years in June 

0/ English Literatitre, o 



114 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

1837. He was a year younger than Wordsworth, who 
lived until 1850. Coleridge, who was a year younger 
than Scott, had died in the house of his friend Mr. 
Gillman at Highgate in July 1834."^ His eldest son 
Hartley, born in 1796, and his one daughter Sara, 
lived; and there was in each of them a touch of the 
father's genius. In Hartley Coleridge there was a 
touch also of his father's weakness. He obtained a 
fellowship at Oriel and having lost it, through fault of 
his own, was for a time in London, then sought un- 
successfully to earn a livelihood by teaching, and de- 
pended afterwards upon his pen. He had published 
in 1826 a book on the "Worthies of Lancashire and 
Yorkshire," and a volume of poems at Leeds in 1833. 
He lived for some time at Rydal, where he died in 
1849. -^^^ poems in two volumes, and a volume of 
"Essays and Marginalia," were edited by his brother 
in 1 85 1. Hartley Coleridge's sister Sara, of whose 
training, in her earlier years, her father's friend Southey 
had charge, married in 1829 her cousin Henry Nelson 
Coleridge, a Chancery barrister. During the first years 
of the Reign of Victoria, nephew and daughter were 
engaged as husband and wife in cherishing the poet's 
memory. The husband edited "Letters, Conversations 
and Recollections" of Coleridge in 1836, also his "Table 
Talk," and in 1839 ^i^ "Literary Remains" in four 
volumes. The wife edited in 1840 her father's "Con- 
fessions of an Inquiring Spirit," gave a new edition of his 

* The Poems of Coleridge are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. II 5 

"Biographia Literaria," in 1847, ^"^ his "Notes and 
Lectures upon Shakespeare" in 1849, and his "Essays 
on his own Times." Henry Nelson Coleridge died in 
1843. Sara Coleridge, who published also in 1837 ^ 
charming fairy tale of her own, "Phantasmion," lived 
until 1852. Her "Memoirs and Letters" were edited 
by her daughter in 1873. 

Robert Southey, in the days of his youth, fired by 
the wild hopes of the French Revolution, and sharing 
its resentment of what man has made of man, had 
planned with Coleridge and other kindred spirits a 
retreat from the old worn-out world to the banks of 
the Susquehanna, where they were to found an all- 
equal-government, a Pant-iso-cracy. Since they would 
need wives Southey had suggested three Miss Frickers 
in his native Bristol, one of whom, Edith, he marked 
for himself, the other two might become — did become 
— wives to two other Pantisocrats. Coleridge took one 
of them, Sara, for his wife; and Robert Lovell, who 
died young, took another. When Lovell died, leaving 
a widow with an infant, Southey was thrown upon his 
own resources, with a hard battle to fight, but he 
added Lovell's widow and child to his own domestic 
cares. When Coleridge afterwards was ill able to help 
himself, much of the burden of Coleridge's family was 
borne also by his hardworking and faithful friend. 
Southey, like Coleridge, after experience of vanity in 
all the hopes inspired by the French Revolution, lost 
faith in reform sought by the way of sudden change, 
and, roughly speaking, took his place with the con- 

8* 



I 1 6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

servatives. in 1813, on the death of Henry James 
Pye, Southey had been made Poet Laureate. He was 
Laureate, therefore, and sixty-three years old — Words- 
worth was sixty-seven — at the accession of Victoria. 
When Southey died, in 1843, he had held for forty ' 
years the office which then passed to his friend Words- 
worth, and of which since the death of Wordsworth 
in 1850, the renewed dignity has been sustained by 
Alfred Tennyson. 

The oldest writers who lived at the beginning of 
the reign of Queen Victoria, and had not wholly ^ 
ceased to produce, were Joanna Baillie, 75 years old; 
Samuel Rogers, 74; Robert Plumer Ward, 72; Miss 
Edgeworth, 70; and Isaac DTsraeli, 70. Joanna Baillie 
had published her first "Plays on the Passions" in 
1798. In 1809 Walter Scott had superintended the 
production of a play of hers at Edinburgh, and in 
1836 she had published three more volumes of plays. 
Though her plays may be little read in future time, 
two or three homely ballads written by her in her 
earlier days, such as, "Woo'd and Married and a'" or 
"The Weary Pund 0' Tow" will live with other de- 
licate and homely pieces which have the simple 
tenderness or playfulness of old ballads that were J 
written often, there is reason to think, by cultivated . 
women. So Lady Nairne who died in 1845, aged 79, 
wrote "the Laird o' Cockpen," "Caller Herrin'" and 
"The Land o' the Leal." Joanna Baillie lived very 
quietly at Hampstead during the first fourteen years 
of the reign, and died at the age of 89, in 185 1. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I I 7 

Miss Edgeworth died two years earlier, and though 
her active life as an author closed in 1834, she 
published a last novel, "Orlandino," in the year before 
her death. 

Samuel Rogers lived to be yet older than Joanna 
Baillie. His age was 74 at the beginning of the 
reign, and he was in his ninety fourth year when he 
died, in December 1855. His old age was not spent 
in seclusion. He was a banker's son, and derived 
wealth in after life from his own partnership in the 
bank. He had poetic feeling, sociable instincts, a 
shrewd sharp wit in conversation, and a ready kind- 
ness. If he had been born poor, he might have been 
a poet of considerable power. He made his reputa- 
tion, in 1792, when he was thirty, with "the Pleasures 
of Memory." It was the best of a group of books, 
"Pleasures of Refinement," "Pleasures of Charity," &c., 
which had been suggested to imitative writers by the 
success of Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination." 
Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination" was a rhetorical 
poem, first published when he was a young man, and 
in good accordance with the fashion of its time. 
Rogers's "Pleasures of Memory" was not only better 
than any other imitation of Akenside, but it was 
better than Akenside. There was a simpler and a 
truer grace of style, due partly to change of literary 
fashion; a theme pleasant to every reader; and the 
ease of a man of taste who could give and take 
refined pleasure, but "whose sails were never to the 
tempest given." Samuel Rogers might have become 



I 1 8 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

an English author of great mark if, at some time 
before he was forty years old, his bank had broken. 
His poem of "Italy" was published in an elegant 
manner, and maintained his credit. The shrewd wit 
of Rogers's conversation ought to have shown only the 
social side of an intellectual vigour that stirred in his 
writing; but as writer, his whole vitality was never 
shown. In the reign of Victoria it was for many years 
the principal charm of a social breakfast table. Samuel 
Rogers's breakfasts were in the reign of Victoria 
what suppers at the Mermaid had been in Elizabeth's 
time; no doubt a highly civilized variation from the 
older fashion. The foremost men in politics, literature 
and art were among Rogers's guests, and in the wit 
combats the venerable host could parry and thrust 
with the nimblest. 

Robert Plumer Ward, who was 72 in 1837, had 
begun life as a barrister, and in 1805, having entered 
parliament, he became Under Secretary for Foreign 
Affairs under Lord Mulgrave. In 1 807 he was a Lord 
of the Admiralty, and from 181 1 to 1823, when he 
retired from public life, he was Clerk of the Ordnance. 
He inserted the name Plumer between his Christian 
and surname to please the second of his three wives. 
Robert Plumer Ward made his more permanent mark 
as a writer with two novels, "Tremaine" in 1825 
and "De Vere" in 1827. They painted society and 
political life, and in society were popular, although 
their tone was that of a thoughtful, cultivated man 
whose speculations touched essentials and who asked 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. IIQ 

thought from his reader. Robert Plumer Ward con- 
tinued to write during the earlier years of the reign 
of Victoria. In 1838 he published "Illustrations of 
Human Life." He discussed in another book what 
he took to be "the Real Character of the Revolution 
of 1688." In 1 84 1 and 1844 he produced novels, "De 
Clifford," and " Chatsworth." In 1846 he died, aged 81, 
and in 1850 the Hon. E. Phipps published his 
"Memoirs and Literary Remains." 

The last of the septuagenarians who remained 
active after the accession of Victoria was Isaac D'ls- 
raeli, father of a more famous son. He was the son 
of a Venetian merchant, settled in England, and drawn 
from his father's profession by a love of books. At 
two and twenty he printed "A Poetical Epistle on 
Abuse of Satire" and in 1791, at the age of 24, 
published the first volume of the series by which he is 
best remembered, "The Curiosities of Literature." 
Two years later, a second volume followed. From 
1794 to 18 II he was unsuccessfully endeavouring to 
earn a place as original author, by poems, romances 
and novels. In 1 8 1 2 he produced another book in the 
style of the Curiosities of Literature, called "the 
Calamities of Authors;" in 1814 followed "the Quarrels 
of Authors." Then, after some historical disquisition on 
James I., with which he began the expression of his 
good will to the Stuarts, there followed in 18 17 a 
third volume of "the Curiosities of Literature." This 
being the work of his that succeeded, there followed 
in 1823 three volumes of a second series of "Curiosi- 



I20 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ties of Literature;" after which he produced, in 
1828-31, five volumes of "Commentaries on the Life 
and Reign of Charles the First." The last of Isaac 
Disraeli's books of gatherings was published in 1841, 
two years after he had become blind. It was called 
"Amenities of Literature." Nine years after the ap- 
pearance of that book, he died, at the age of 83. 
Isaac D'Israeli's Curiosities and Amenities of Litera- 
ture, Calamities and Quarrels of Authors, are odds 
and ends of the reading of a man who looked out 
actively for interesting bits of life and character, and 
took pleasure in carrying his reading along byways 
of literary life. He persuaded himself, in a mild way, 
that he was gathering materials for a History of 
English Literature, and he mined diligently for hidden 
treasures. But his heaps are unsifted, and the higher 
qualities of mind were little used in bringing them 
together. Isaac D'Israeli had a love for books beyond 
that of a trifler. There is human interest in each of 
his scraps, and suggestiveness in his manner of group- 
ing them. The books must always be entertaining; 
and they may be occasionally useful to a student who 
will take the trouble, by his own reading, to correct 
or verify, and by his own thinking to get the light 
required for a right seeing of any supposed fact. In 
Isaac D'Israeli's account of Gabriel Harvey, for ex- 
ample, there is not a sentence without at least one 
error in it, expressed or implied; yet all is honestly 
based on reading. The errors come of reading with- 
out balancing authorities, or testing statements by 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 121 

known facts, or weighing evidence in any way. The 
lights and shades of truth are hard to get, and when 
got they take sharpness of effect, or what the ignorant 
call clearness, from a story. Many a man may be 
said to take great pains to spoil his work for all 
readers except the thoughtful. Isaac D'Israeli's fault 
is really, perhaps, inseparable from the kind of book 
on which his credit rests, and his are by far the best 
books of their kind. If the strictest of English scholars 
were so much of a magician that he could cause at 
wall what books he pleased to be forgotten, he would 
never deprive himself and others of these pleasant 
stores of literary small talk. 

Still following along the course of life the course 
of time, we turn now to those writers who at the ac- 
cession of Victoria were between sixty and seventy 
years old; some of them still capable of ripe and 
energetic work, all working still in cordial fellowship 
with younger men whose turn it was to be chief 
builders for the future. Among those who had been 
most active in the preceding generation was the great 
master builder, William Wordsworth, whose age at the 
beginning of the reign was sixty-seven. Southey was 
sixty-three, and Walter Savage Landor sixty-two. 
Then there were the men who had given new life and 
new means of continued life to the free conflict of 
opinion, by helping to found the Edinburgh Review 
and Blackwood's Magazine: Francis Jeffrey who in 
1837 was sixty-four years old, Sydney Smith who was 
sixty-eight, — their younger comrade Brougham was 



122 OP ENGLISH LITERATURE 

fifty-eight — and John Wilson, who was sixty-two. 
Thomas Campbell, who had sung "the Pleasures of 
Hope" at the close of the eighteenth century, was sixty, 
and James Montgomery was sixty-six. 

William Wordsworth, son of John Wordsworth, an 
attorney who was law agent to Sir James Lowther, 
afterwards Earl of Lonsdale, was born on the 7th of 
April 1770. His father had married Anne Cookson, 
daughter of a draper at Penrith. There were five 
children by the marriage, four boys and a girl. Richard 
the eldest, who became a lawyer, then William and 
Dorothy, Christopher and John. — Christopher, who was 
trained for the Church, became Fellow, and afterwards 
Master, of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was Master 
of Trinity in 1837, t)ut resigned in 1840 and died in 
1846. He edited a collection of Ecclesiastical Bio- 
graphy, and argued for King Charles's authorship of 
"Eikon Basilike." One of his sons, also named Chris- 
topher, and also a writer of books, is the present 
Bishop of Lincoln (188 1). Among his writings is 
a book on "Greece, Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical," 
published in 1840, with books of Biblical criticism, 
and on the state of Education and Religion in France 
and Italy. — William, Dorothy and John were the three 
children of the family who were especially bound one 
to another, for there was in each of them the poetic 
temperament. When William was eight years old he 
lost his mother. He and his brother Christopher were 
sent soon afterwards to school at Hawkshead, a pic- 
turesque village between Esthwaite and Coniston lakes, 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 123 

where there is one of the grammar schools that were 
founded in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The boys 
lodged with Dames in the cottages round about, and 
in the cottage of Anne Tyson William Wordsworth had 
a happy home with freedom to ramble at wdll over 
the hills. He was at school at Hawkshead, a boy of 
fourteen, when he heard of his father's death. Sir James 
Lowther, to whose estates John Wordsworth had been 
agent, had borrowed tiearly all the money that his 
agent had, five thousand pounds, and refused to repay 
it. What remained was lost in the endeavour to re- 
cover what was gone. When Sir James died, as Lord 
Lonsdale, in 1802, his successor made amends to the 
utmost of his power. He paid to the family the prin- 
cipal due, with ample interest, and he remained a 
cordial friend. To him Wordsworth dedicated his 
"Excursion," and it was he who, by obtaining for him 
a small salaried office in Westmoreland, enabled the 
poet in his later years to unite "plain living and high 
thinking" free from anxiety lest bread should fail. 
But until 1 80 1 the young Wordsworths were an orphan 
family, dependent on two uncles for their maintenance. 
Their uncles proposed to educate both William and 
Christopher for the Church, and William was sent 
from Hawkshead school, in October 1787, to St. John's 
College, Cambridge. He loved the poets; his own skill 
in verse had been encouraged by the head master at 
Hawkshead, the Rev. William Taylor, who died not 
long before Wordsworth left the school, Wordsworth 
being among the few elder boys of whom, from his 



124 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

death bed, he took leave. More than the poets, Words- 
worth loved that out of which all poetry springs, 
Man's world within him and without him, his to unite, 
to conquer and possess. At the close of his second 
session in Cambridge Europe felt the fall of the Bastille. 
He went to College at a time when the reaction against 
formalism, the desire towards a truer life for men, 
stirred even the old and was growing to a passion 
among those of the young who had generous hearts 
and quick imaginations. Wordsworth tells, in the poem 
published after his death as "The Prelude," what ideal 
of a University he took to Cambridge, and how he felt 
himself repelled by the emptiness of what he found. 
Colleges and schools had not escaped the deadening 
influences of the preceding time, and the resentment 
of a young enthusiast is in Wordsworth's picture of 
what Cambridge seemed to him. 

All degrees 
And shapes of spurious fame and short-lived praise 
Here sate in state, and fed with daily alms 
Retainers won away from solid good: 
And here was Labour, his own bondslave; Hope, 
That never set the pains against the prize; 
Idleness halting with his weary clog, 
And poor misguided Shame, and witless Fear, 
And simple Pleasure foraging for Death; 
Honour misplaced, and Dignity astray; 
Feuds, factions, flatteries, enmity, and guile 
Murmuring submission, and bald government, 
(The idol weak as the idolator) 
And Decency and Custom, starving Truth, 
And blind Authority beating with his staff 
The child that might have led him. 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 12$ 

Wordsworth, well trained at Hawkshead, could meet 
without labour all that Cambridge required of him, if 
he had no desire for University distinction. He read 
the poets, thought his own thoughts, spent the first 
vacation at Hawkshead in the cottage of his old dame 
Tyson, and the second with his relations at Penrith. 
During that vacation, news of the great movement in 
France poured in on him. Throughout his next year 
at College his mind was stirred by the new hopes for 
man. When the third session was closing, and his 
uncles wished him to read for honours, he was more 
disposed like Brutus to "think of the world," and ob- 
tained leave to set out with a young College friend, 
Robert Jones, afterwards a Welsh clergyman, for a 
walk through France to the Alps. With his deep 
enjoyment of external nature, the Alps would at any 
time have drawn Wordsworth across France. But a 
higher pleasure than the Alps could give, he looked 
for and found on his way to them. There was 

France standing on the top of golden hours, 
And human nature seeming born again. 

There he said that he saw 

How bright a face is worn when joy of one 
Is joy for tens of millions. 

He came home, took in January 1791 his B. A. degree, 
and shrank from entering the Church. But he was 
moneyless, dependent on his uncles, and must earn. 
His bent was towards Literature, but with law in the 
background he spent time in London; then, since hope 



126 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

still beat high for the regeneration of the world, and 
his mind was already in France, he discovered the 
importance of acquiring a good knowledge of French, 
and obtained leave to spend a little time in learning 
French among the French. In Paris he found too 
many English, and went honestly to live at Blois and 
Orleans. In October 1792 he returned to Paris, a 
month after the September massacres. While he re- 
coiled from the cruelty and outrage that had stained 
the cause of the Revolutionists, he told himself that 
all these evils came of ignorance and brutality among 
men whose minds had been starved through genera- 
tions of oppression. If the thinkers could prevail; if 
earnest men who knew the way to the right haven 
could make their voices heard among those untaught 
mariners who only added to the tumult of the storm, 
they might escape wreck yet. Little as he could do, 
he could speak French and write it; he did care with 
all his soul for the great hope that, in many a pure 
and fervent mind, had been associated with the out- 
break of the Revolution. He would give all that he 
had to give in aid of the endeavour to secure the 
triumph of high thought and generous emotion over 
ignorance and passion. He would take part in the 
work of the Girondists. His uncles saw his danger, 
and by stopping his allowance obliged him to come 
home at the end of 1792. As he wrote to Coleridge 
in "The Prelude," if he had not been compelled to 
j-eturn home, 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 27 

Doubtless I should then have made common cause 
With some who perished; haply perished too; 
A poor mistaken and bewildered offering, — 
Should to the breast of Nature have gone back, 
With all my resolutions, all my hopes. 

Wordsworth, in England again, was still full of the 
enthusiasm of the time, with an instinct strong as 
Milton's had been to the poet's calling, and no de- 
finite profession conceived for him by others but the 
Church or Law. He tried Literature by publishing 
after his return his poem called "An Evening Walk, 
Addressed to a young Lady," his sister Dorothy. He 
published also a poem with a mild title, "Descriptive 
Sketches taken during a Pedestrian Tour among the 
Alps." The title is mild, and the rhymed couplets 
are not as good as those of Goldsmith's "Traveller"; 
but the young blood courses through many of Words- 
worth's lines, for his theme is the walk across France 
wdth his friend Jones, and the hopes of the time are in it. 
To his faithful uncles, who were doing their full duty 
by a dead brother's and sister's children, William 
Wordsworth himself must have then presented a some- 
what hopeless problem. 

There came at last an unlooked-for solution. Among 
Wordsworth's friends at Penrith was a young man, 
Raisley Calvert, like himself in social position, for 
his father had been steward to estates of the Duke 
of Norfolk. At Christmas 1794 he was dying of con- 
sumption, and his friend Wordsworth nursed him. 
Calvert had a little money to leave, he knew his 
friend's aspirations and the bonds of fortune by whicl^ 



128 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

they were restrained, he knew also of a resolute will 
that justified faith in his future. Raisley Calvert left 
to his friend nine hundred pounds, and Wordsworth 
resolved by strictest thrift to secure independence 
henceforth, not for himself only but also for his sister 
Dorothy. She had never known, since their father's 
death, a settled home, but had been taken care of 
generally by relations among whom she visited. Words- 
worth resolved now to be poet, and as far as was in 
his power a true poet; finding his own way to the 
highest utterance within his reach, not bending before 
any gale of fashion, but with a resolve, like Milton's, 
to do all as in his great Taskmaster's eye. Through 
the good offices of a friend at Bristol he was led to 
become tenant of a very quiet house called Race- 
down, which lies below the road as it winds round 
the lower slope of Pilsdon Hill, half way between 
Lyme Regis and Crewkerne. To this home he brought 
his sister Dorothy, he five and twenty, she four and 
twenty, glorying in the first sense of being mistress of 
a real home of her own. There was no place large, 
enough to contain shops within six miles in any 
direction, and the post came in only once a week. The 
scenery about the house was peaceful, and there was 
fine walking on the hills in the direction of the sea. Of 
Raisley Calvert's legacy, Wordsworth wrote afterwards 
to his friend Sir George Beaumont, "Upon the interest 
of the a^goo — ^400 being laid out in annuity, with 
£200 deducted from the principal, and ^100 a legacy 
to my sister, and a^ioo more which the 'Lyrical 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I2g 

Ballads' have brought me, my sister and I continued 
to live seven years, nearly eight." 

Among the few readers of the little pamphlet of 
verse in which Wordsworth described his walk across 
France to the Alps, had been Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
It had come to him at the time when he had left 
Cambridge, made Southey's acquaintance, and was 
deep in the project for a Pantisocracy. He had found 
in Wordsworth's verse something that answered to 
his own enthusiasm for new hopes that France had 
quickened. The scheme for a Pantisocracy had only 
brought him a wife. He had lectured on Charles the 
First and on the French Revolution; had preached; 
had inspired in rich warm-hearted men a sense of his 
rare genius; had obtained a small pension from the 
Wedgwoods of Etruria, that he might have leisure for 
intellectual work, and had settled at Nether Stowey 
near the Bristol Channel, partly because another of his 
liberal friends and helpers, Mr. Poole, lived there and 
was the good genius of the place. When Coleridge 
at Nether Stowey learned that William Wordsworth, 
the author of the "Descriptive Sketches" in which he 
had found an ardour akin to his own, was living a 
few miles from Crewkerne, he walked over to see him. 
The sudden dropping in upon them of an enthusiastic 
poet, who was even a little younger than themselves, 
was a great event to William and Dorothy. The three 
became firm friends; and the result of the friendship 
was that William and Dorothy left Racedown to live 
within reach of Coleridge's daily companionship. In 

0/ Evglish Liierahire. 9 



130 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

July 1797, therefore, Wordsworth and his sister settled 
within two or three miles of Nether Stowey at Alfoxden, 
where Wordsworth had also a son of Mr. Basil Montagu 
living with him as pupil. Not long afterwards, in the 
autumn of that year, Wordsworth and his sister planned 
a walk with Coleridge to Linton, and thought to pay 
the small expense of the holiday by writing a poem 
that might bring them five pounds from "the New 
Monthly Magazine." A friend, Mr. Cruikshank, had 
been dreaming about a Phantom Ship. Coleridge 
suggested the dream as a groundwork of the poem. 
Wordsworth, who had been reading in Shelvocke's 
voyages the sailors' superstitions about albatrosses, sug- 
gested shooting an albatross as the crime that was to 
bring trouble on the Ancient Mariner, and it was he 
also who suggested the navigation of the ship by the 
dead men. The poem was written by Coleridge, 
Wordsworth only furnishing a few lines. When written, 
"the Rime of the Ancient Mariner" seemed too impor- 
tant to be given to a magazine. It caused the planning 
of a book, the "Lyrical Ballads," in which Coleridge was 
to deal chiefly with the supernatural world and Words- 
worth with the natural. Each was to take the direct 
way to the realising of poetic thought, by avoidance of 
conventional phrases and the use of words chosen 
from the language of real life. Coleridge's friend, 
Joseph Cottle at Bristol, was bold enough to publish 
the book and pay the authors. When he sold his 
stock and copyrights, not long afterwards, the tender 
made for "Lyrical Ballads" was £0 os od. Cottle 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I3I 

thoughtfully, therefore, took the opportunity of passing 
back the despised copyright to the authors. With £ ^o 
Daid by Cottle for Wordsworth's share of the Lyrical 
Ballads, William and Dorothy went abroad and spent 
;he winter 1798-9 at Goslar near the Hartz Moun- 
;ains. With the first breath of spring, after an un- 
isally cold winter, Wordsworth felt the last ties of the 
)ld days, "Not mine, and such as were not made for 
ne," to fall away from him. His mind stirred by 
m active sense of freedom with its "trances of thought 
md mountings of the mind," looked boldly to a life 
)efore him, all his own, a poet's life. 

Days of sweet leisure, taxed with patient thought 
Abstruse, nor wanting punctual service high, 
Matins and vespers of harmonious verse. 

Free to move as they pleased, the brother and 
ister, when they came back to England, went to Stock- 
on upon Tees, for there lived an old companion at 
he Dame School in Penrith, Mary Hutchinson. From 
)tockton a walk was taken with Coleridge in the Lake 
Country. As the year drew to a close, and it became 
lecessary to set up another independent home, Words- 
/orth remembered a little cottage just outside the 
illage of Grasmere, upon the border of the Lake, 
,^hich had been to let. He walked over to see whether 
: was still to be had, found that it was, and took it 
rom the next following Christmas, 1799. So it was 
liat Wordsworth and his sister began their life at 
rrasmere in the beginning of this century. There 

9* 



t:^2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Wordsworth, thirty years •ago, began by producing j 
with additions, a new edition in two volumes of the 
"Lyrical Ballads," and occupied leisure hours in poetic 
meditation on the past course of his life that made 
him what he was, and to what end he worked. Inj 
this long poem, addressed to Coleridge, and publishedj 
by his widow after his death as "the Prelude," Words- 
worth was feeling his way to a clear knowledge of his 
place among the poets. He married Mary Hutchinsor 
in 1802, the year in which Lord Lonsdale diedf 
childless and his heir, who was a clergyman's son, paicj 
the debt to the Wordsworths, thus giving about £ 1 8ocj 
each, to William and his sister Dorothy. Lifluence OJ 
his sister and of his wife, in the peace of Grasmere, 
valley, brought calm to his spirit. While others, who 
had felt as he felt in 1789, lost all hope when the 
Revolution failed, the close of Wordsworth's " Prelude,' j 
written in 1805 and the beginning of 1806, shows, 
that he had gained a surer though a calmer hope. 

Throughout the war with Napoleon, Wordswortl: 
illustrated in a noble series of poems, grouped in hiSi 
Works as "Poems dedicated to National Liberty anc; 
Independence," the best mind of England combatin^| 
against tyrannic force. Li June 1803 his eldest child 
his Son John, was born. In the same year began his 
friendship with Sir George Beaumont, that lasted unti'. 
Beaumont's death in 1827. In August 1804 his, 
daughter Dorothy — Dora — was born. The son Johr, 
had been named after Wordsworth's brother John who; 
at the close of 1804, was appointed to the commanc 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1.^^ 

of the Abergavenny East Indiaman. The ship sailed 
with 402 passengers on board, and on the 5th of 
February 1805, through fault of the pilot, struck on 
the shambles of the Bill of Portland. Of all who 
were on board only 139 were saved. The captain 
staid by his duty on the wreck, and went down with 
it. It was to have been John Wordsworth's last voyage, 
from which he had hoped to retire with means enough 
to spend the rest of his days at Grasmere with 
William and Dorothy, who had contributed 5^1200 
Dut of their shares in the little patrimony to advance 
heir brother's fortunes. In June 1806 Wordsworth's 
hird child, Thomas, was born, and in September 1808 
lis fourth child Catherine. The family could no 
onger be housed in the cottage at Townend, and 
here was removal to another house in Grasmere, 
:alled Allan Bank. In May 18 10 William, the fifth 
:hild, was born. Thomas and Catherine failed in 
lealth. In 18 11 the family removed from Allan Bank 
o the Old Grasmere Rectory, opposite the church- 
ard. Catherine was laid in the churchyard in 
une 18 1 2. In the autumn little Thomas swept the 
ailing leaves from his sister's grave, but he was 
aid by her side in the following December. Change 
f home was then absolutely necessary. Peace of 
nind was unattainable by Wordsworth and his wife 
nthin daily sight of the churchyard in which were 
he graves of their two little ones. For this reason a 
lOuse was sought at Rydal, about two miles distant, 
nd in the spring of 18 13 the family removed to 



134 ^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Rydal Mount, which was thenceforth Wordsworth's 
permanent home. About the same time the second 
Lord Lonsdale, who in every way made generous 
amends for the wrong done by his predecessor to the 
Wordsworths, placed the poet above narrow care for 
bread by obtaining for him the post of distributor 
of stamps for Westmoreland, and afterwards for 
Cumberland also. The assured income of ^^500 a 
year gave Wordsworth ease, and enabled him to pro-; 
duce in 18 14 his "Excursion." This was one part 
only of a poem designed on a larger scale, but it was^ 
in itself a complete expression of what would have 
been the purpose of the whole. Through "the Ex. 
cursion" Wordsworth dealt with the problem of oui 
common life as it stood after the failure of those whc 
had aimed at a reconstruction of society by Revolu^ 
tion. Wordsworth still maintained the loftiest idea] 
of a humanized society. He used poetically the cha-i 
racters drawn in "the Excursion" as so many facton 
in working out his own solution of the problem. The 
Wanderer represents shrewd natural sense, strength 
ened in youth by homely and religious education anc 
in manhood by wide intercourse with men. The Solitarj 
represents one in whom faith seems dead, enthusiasrr 
for the best aims of the Revolution being quellec 
by the apparent failure of the effort. Talk betweei 
Wanderer and Solitary, and all the associated ini 
cidents, maintain one flow of thought, until the Pastor 
representing culture and religion in acquaintance wit! 
the daily lives of men, adds his part to the argument 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 135 

The full course of reasoning leads to expression of 

the faith which is at the heart of Wordsworth's poetry. 

It there first found distinct expression. It is now the 

faith of all who look for a full civilization. The 

question of "the Prelude," "What one is, why may not 

millions be?" is answered in "the Excursion." The 

way to realize the far ideal is not by violent change 

in the outward form of a state, but by change in the 

minds of its citizens. The first condition of success 

in this citizen-building is that no child's mind shall 

be left untaught; and in the year before Waterloo 

Wordsworth in "the Excursion" was claiming for every 

child its sacred right, and urging on the State its 

duty. Now, he said, when destruction is a prime 

pursuit, 

"Show to the wretched nations for what end 
The powers of civil polity were given. " 

The first edition of 500 copies of "the Excursion" 
lasted the English public for six years. The next 
edition of 500 it took seven years to sell. Southey 
heard of a critic who thought he had crushed "the 
Excursion." "He crush 'the Excursion!'" Southey said. 
"Tell him he might as well think he could crush 
Skiddaw." 

At the beginning of the reign of Victoria Words- 
worth had long since delivered his message. He 
published in 1837 "Memorials of a Tour in Italy," 
and with them a poem, "Guilt and Sorrow," written 
in 1 79 1. In 1838 he was made L. L. D. of Durham, 
in 1839 D. C. L. of Oxford. Southey died on the 



r36 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

2 1 St of March 1843, and Wordsworth was then made 
Poet Laureate. In 1841 his daughter Dora married 
Edward Quillinan, an old friend of the family. In 1 846 
Wordsworth was elected by the students Rector of the 
University of Glasgow. His only surviving brother, 
Christopher, died in that year. In 1847 Dora died, 
and Wordsworth wrote "Our Sorrow I feel is for life, 
but God's will be done." In 1850, on the loth of 
March he attended service at Rydal Chapel for the 
last time. In the evening he walked to Grasmere 
through a keen north-east wind, called at a cottage 
and sat down on the stone seat of the porch to watch 
the setting sun. He was eighty years old, and lightly 
clad. There followed, after a few days, a fatal in- 
flammation of the throat and chest. When hope of 
recovery was gone, his wife whispered to him "William, 
you are going to Dora." He died on the 23d of 
April 1850, and was buried beside his children in the 
churchyard at Grasmere. 

Robert Southey, born on the 12th of August 1774, 
was the son of a linendraper in Bristol. His father 
was noted for his punctual habits, a characteristic that 
his son inherited, but although punctuality is said to 
be the soul of business, Southey's father was unpro- 
sperous. Southey himself owed the chief care over his 
childhood and youth to a maiden aunt. Miss Tyler, an 
elder half sister of his mother's, and to his mother's 
brother the Rev. Herbert Hill, chaplain to the British 
factory at Lisbon. He was sent to Westminster School. 
In his last year at Westminster, in 1792, Southey con- 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 37 

tributed to a school magazine called "the Flagellant" a 
playful article on Flogging, tracing the practice in 
schools as a sacred rite associated with the worship of 
the Devil, and glancing at head masters as high priests 
by whom its mysteries were maintained and trans- 
mitted. Dr. Vincent, the head master at Westminster, re- 
sented the article, and Southey was expelled. We have 
to remember the emotions of the time, the revolutionary 
outburst in the greater w^orld: the sympathies, in school 
and college, of large bodies of the young with all at- 
tacks on tyranny; the strong feeling on the other side 
that impelled to battle for authority, and the belief 
that, then if ever, it was necessary to assert authority 
against the spirit of insubordination among those who 
were to be citizens of the future, and upon whose 
allegiance to law the future of England might depend. 
Uncle Hill held by his nephew, who was open, generous, 
alive with eager intellect; and as for any common sense 
he wanted, that, his uncle said, would come. At a 
time, therefore, when Southey's father, a broken man, 
was dying. Uncle Hill and Aunt Tyler proceeded to send 
their nephew to Oxford. But the offended head master 
had sent such an account of him to the authorities at 
Christ Church that when he applied for admission there 
he was refused. He was entered to Baliol; and at that 
time of his entrance into the University, his father 
died. At Oxford he w^as "citizen Southey," full of wild 
poetic hope for the regeneration of the world. At 
nineteen he began an epic poem, "Joan of Arc," and 
finished it in six weeks. One ground of interest in the 



138 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

theme was, that it represented high emotion and a 
patriotic struggle of France against English invasion. 
England then had entered into what Southey regarded 
as unholy war against the Revolution. Like Words- 
worth, Southey gave his sympathy to the Girondins who 
took Brissot for their guide. After the execution of 
Brissot, in the autumn of 1793, Southey felt, as Cowper 
had felt, sick at heart with every day's report of wrong 
and outrage. There seemed to him no place left in 
the corrupted world for virtue. In the summer of 1794 
citizen Southey at Oxford was visited by Coleridge 
from Cambridge. The scheme of a migration to the 
Susquehanna was devised. Robert's mysterious plot- 
tings gave Aunt Tyler concern. Uncle Hill, who still 
hoped that he might guide his nephew to a quiet 
living in the English church, held that, whatever the 
plots, a run to Spain and Portugal with him when he 
returned to his own post at Lisbon, would distract the 
boy's attention from them, and would do him good. 
Southey was glad of the run, but he had engaged 
himself to marry Edith Fricker. To make all sure, he 
married her privately before starting, his friend Joseph 
Cottle, a sympathetic bookseller who believed in 
Southey's genius and in the genius also of his friend 
Coleridge, lending the money necessary for the wed- 
ding ring and marriage fees. Southey went to Spain, 
wrote to Edith letters from Spain and Portugal de- 
signed for publication, and came back with that know- 
ledge of Spanish which he increased and turned to 
excellent account for literary labours of his after years. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I3Q 

He had now to acknowledge his wife, to bear the with- 
drawal of all further care for him by his Aunt Tyler, 
and to fight the battle of life for himself. In 1796 
"Joan of Arc" was published by Cottle. The "Letters 
from Spain and Portugal" were published also in 1797. 
There were changes of lodging, and there was constant 
increase in the number of Southey's literary friends. 
There came aid of a^i6o a year from his old school 
fellow Charles Wynn, according, as they both felt, to 
the fashion of the good time that would come when 

Whate'er is wanting to yourselves 
In others ye shall promptly find, and all, 
Enriched by mutual and reflected wealth, 
Shall with one heart honour their common kind. 

In 1799 and 1800 there were published two little 
volumes of an "Annual Anthology," containing verses 
by Southey, Coleridge, Robert Lloyd, Charles Lamb, 
Humphrey Davy, then a young man of one and twenty 
at Bristol, and other contributors. Southey earned a 
guinea a week by writing verses for "the Morning Post," 
to which also Wordsworth and Coleridge contributed. 
But Wordsworth had found his own path. Coleridge 
was not of punctual habits. Southey alone, looking upon 
such work as a source of income, held to it with his 
usual diligence. He finished "Madoc," worked at 
"Thalaba," and was planning "the Curse of Kehama" 
before "Thalaba" was finished. He paid a visit, with 
his wife, in 1800, to Uncle Hill in Portugal, who, 
always wise and kind, was still his friend. 

In 1 80 1, when Southey returned, Coleridge was 



140 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

settled for a time at Greta Hall, Keswick, by Derwent- 
water, where he was thirteen miles from Wordsworth 
at Grasmere. Southey visited him there, but being 
offered the post of private secretary to Montagu Corry, 
Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, with a salary 
of ^400 a year, he felt bound to accept it. Then, 
leaving his wife for a time at Keswick, Southey went 
to Dublin. He found that he had little to do, that 
little being tedious. When it was suggested that he 
should fill up his spare time by acting also as tutor 
to Mr. Corry's son, Southey gave up the appointment 
and fell back upon the literary life that was for him 
the happiest. In 1801 he published two volumes of 
Poems, and also "Thalaba." In 1802 his mother came 
to see him in his London lodging, and died there. He 
moved to a little furnished house at Bristol and worked 
on his English version of "Amadis of Gaul," which he 
had undertaken to produce for £60. In the autumn 
of this year his first child was born, a daughter, who 
died in a few months. To comfort his wife with the 
companionship of her sister, Coleridge's wife, Southey 
went with her to Greta Hall, which thenceforth be- 
came their home. It was first shared with Coleridge; 
but Coleridge, suffering from the damp of the lake 
country, soon afterwards wandered away, and the 
home remained Southey's, with charge in it for some 
time of Coleridge's wife and children, and of his wife's 
other sister, Robert Lovell's widow. All was to be 
maintained by steady, cheerful labour of the pen. In 
1803 "Amadis of Gaul" appeared, and interest in the 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 14! 

boy poet of his native Bristol prompting a kind heart, 
Southey edited Chatterton's poems for the benefit of 
Chatterton's relations. 

At Greta Hall there were Coleridge's children. 
Hartley and Derwent were the two boys, and Sara was 
a baby of seven months when, after the loss of his 
own first child, Southey first saw her at Keswick. On 
May Day in 1804 Southey again had a child of his 
own, a daughter, Edith May, and Southey wrote in 
i8og, "I have five children, three of them at home, 
and two under my mother's care in heaven." Sara 
Coleridge, who was bred by Southey in that household 
of cheerful love and labour, spoke of him as "upon 
the w^hole the best man she had ever known." 

"Madoc" w^as published in 1805, and also a col- 
lection of "Metrical Tales." Southey's profit from 
"Madoc," with w^hich poem he had taken especial 
pains, was, at the end of a year, ^3. i6s. id. In 
1807 he published an English version of "Palmerin of 
England," also "Specimens of the Later English Poets," 
also "Espriella's Letters," which playfully represented 
English manners and customs as they were supposed 
to appear to a visitor from Spain. In this year 1807 
his old school-friend Charles Wynn obtained for him, 
on account of literary services, a pension from the 
Civil List that took the place of his own annual 
allowance of ^i6o, and was of about that value. 
Still working the mine of Spanish literature, out of 
which he had drawn some part of the help of his 
housekeeping, Southey next produced a version of 



142 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

"the Chronicle of the Cid." Then followed, in 1810, 
the "Curse of Kehama" and a "History of Brazil." 
Away from libraries Southey needed books, and he 
loved their companionship. Books had multiplied 
about him from his youth upward, and the volumes 
in the library at Greta Hall grew in time, through 
purchase and gift, from four thousand to fourteen 
thousand. Half a dozen labours were usually being 
carried on together at the study table; long hours of 
work were punctually observed; refreshment was in 
change of the form of work; and rest was everywhere 
outside the study in the cheerful home, its wise peace 
and its tender playfulness. "There is no sense so 
good," he said, "as your honest genuine nonsense." 
Southey avoided excitement. In his mind, as in 
other minds, the young faith in sudden change had 
been overthrown, and while he looked still, as his 
"Colloquies" show, and passages in his poem on the 
field of Waterloo, to a nobler day for man, he looked 
to its slow attainment by advance of a true sense of 
life with the advance of culture. Like Wordsworth 
he laid chief stress upon education of the people. 
The changed tone of his mind brought him into 
accord with the founders of "the Quarterly Review," 
and after its establishment, in 1809, writing for "the 
Quarterly" became one form of Southey's work. In 
1813 Southey was made Poet Laureate, and in 18 14 
he produced the best of his longer tales in verse, 
"Roderick, the Last of the Goths." In 1818, behind 
his yearly income, Southey had for his whole fortune 



IN THE PIEIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 43 

^400 in consols. In 182 1 that sum had been in- 
creased, and he gave all to a ruined friend who had 
been good to him in former years. Yet he refused 
an offer of ^^2000 a year if he would come to London 
and write daily in "the Times." 

A son and daughter had died in the happy home 
at Greta Hall; grief for their loss was so deep seated 
that father and mother never dared again to speak 
their names. But a deeper grief followed in 1834, 
when, after forty years, during which, as he wrote to 
his friend Bedford, "she has been the life of my life," 
Southey's wife had to be placed in a lunatic asylum. 
Next year she was returned to him and for her last 
days trusted to his care, but she lived only until 
November. He worked as hard as ever, and his 
earnings had so far increased that he was now making 
some provision for his family in case of death. Sir 
Robert Peel offered him a baronetcy. That was de- 
clined, but Sir Robert then added ^300 a year to 
Southey's pension. 

Such was the English worthy who was poet laureate 
in 1837, aged sixty three, at the beginning of the reign 
of Queen Victoria. He had been editing Cowper's 
works, and touching upon the insanity in Cowper's 
life, while she whom he loved best was dying insane 
beside him. His gentleness of manner was even in- 
creased by his sense of the shades that were closing 
in upon his evening of life. His memory would fail; 
his old animation was gone; his body had wasted; 
and the eagle face had lost its fire. Among his friends. 



144 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

for the last twenty years, had been Caroline Bowles, 
only child of Captain Charles Bowles of Buckland 
near Lymington, who had distinguished herself by 
verses to which her name was not attached, and which 
had excited Southey's admiration. He had expressed 
his admiration for her in "the Quarterly" before he 
knew her personally. At Midsummer in 1839 Southey 
married Miss Bowles, his age being then sixty five, 
hers fifty two. But the failure of power was not 
checked. Signs of decay became more and more 
manifest. Two months after his marriage he began 
to lose himself at times in conversation. Then the 
use of the pen failed; then the power of reading. He 
walked about among his books, still loving them, al- 
though they were dumb to him now. Wordsworth in 
1840 visited him in his library at Greta Hall. Southey 
did not know him, until told who it was. "Then," 
wrote Wordsworth, "his eyes flashed for a moment 
with their former brightness, but he sank into the state 
in which I had found him, patting with both hands his 
books affectionately like a child." He died on the 
2 1 St of March 1843. 

Southey's whole character is in his writings. In 
prose and verse he maintained the reaction against 
formalism by a simple purity of style, based on the 
simple purity of his own character. The only man of 
whom he wrote severely was Byron, and that only 
after Don Juan began to appear, because he felt that 
Byron made an ill use of his genius, and dragged 
minds down instead of raising them. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 145 

There was health in the ideal of his own longer 
poetical romances, and although they yield few lines 
that cast a thought into imperishable form, "Thalaba'' 
and "the Curse of Kehama," "Madoc" and "Roderick" 
are four of the best metrical tales in English Litera- 
ture. In "Thalaba" and "the Curse of Kehama" there 
was, as in Scott's metrical romances, an escape from 
the convention of heroic couplets, but Southey's de- 
fiance of convention was as absolute as he could 
make it. 

"Madoc" and "Roderick" were in blank verse of 
simple dignity. In "Roderick," which might fairly be 
called an epic, Southey's more ambitious tale-writing rose 
to its best form. In the less ambitious work, the metrical 
tales and legends of his younger days, the grace of a 
playful good humour blends with the spirit of romance, 
and there never will be a time when they cease to 
furnish a part of the familiar literature of the English 
People. In the "Life of Nelson," published in 1813, 
Southey gave to a national theme the charm of 
his clear style, and in "the Doctor," of which the first 
volume was published anonymously in 1833, ^^'^^ the 
last some years after his death, the whole pleasantness 
of Southey's character with his best sense of life 
breathes through his love of books. 

In the last days of his mental darkness, Southey 
was heard breathing to himself with satisfaction the 
name of his friend Landor — "Ay, Landor, Landor..." 
He had met Landor first at Bristol in 1 808, and spoke 
of him as "the only man of whose praise I was ambi- 

0/ English Lite?-ature, lO 



146 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

tious, or whose censure would have humbled me." 
Walter Savage Landor, who was about six months 
younger than Southey, lived on through a vigorous 
old age to the year 1864. He was the son of a 
physician at Warwick, and was born on the 30th of 
January 1775. His second name of Savage was that 
of his mother's family. His mother owned the two 
estates in Warwickshire of Ipsley Court and Tach- 
brook, with a share of a reversionary interest in 
Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. To this pro- 
perty, worth a^ 80,000 and strictly entailed upon her 
eldest son, Landor was heir. At ten he was sent to 
Rugby, vigorous, impulsive, impatient, with a quick 
intellect that fastened upon nature and upon those 
books of the poets which are the best part of nature. 
He soon became one of the best Latin scholars in 
Rugby and probably the best writer of Latin verse. 
It irritated him that the head master seemed to under- 
rate his work; and when Landor was irritated the fire 
flashed, it never smouldered. A violent quarrel with 
the head master over a Latin quantity led to a request 
that his father would remove Landor from Rugby, 
since he would not bend his temper to school dis- 
cipline. His sympathy with the French Revolution 
brought him into conflict of opinion at home; but 
his sympathy was that of a mind with extreme 
bias towards individual freedom. He was a natural 
republican, and could not bow to the despotic monarchy 
of school. After two years with a private tutor Landor 
went, in 1793, to Oxford. He was at Trinity when 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 47 

Southey was at Baliol. But Landor's college life was ^ 
brought to an abrupt end, like his life at Rugby. 
Being rusticated, he gave up his chambers and refused 
to go back to the University. This brought to a head 
the disputes at home, and Landor parted from his 
father. Allowance was made to him of a^ 150 a year 
with freedom of action, and welcome to his father's 
house w^henever he paid it a visit. Landor then 
went to South Wales, living at Swansea, Tenby, or 
elsewhere, and sometimes visiting home. In South 
Wales there was again close communion with books 
and nature, and with all his keen relish for the 
ancient classics he found in Milton the masterpoet; 
"even the great hexameter sounded to me tinkling 
when I had recited aloud, in my solitary walks on the 
seashore, the haughty appeal of Satan and the re- 
pentance of Eve." Near Tenby he had friends in the 
family of Lord Aylmer. Rose Aylmer lent him a "His- 
tory of Romance" by Clara Reeve, in which he found 
the sketch of a tale that suggested to him his poem of 
"Gebir." Landor began "Gebir" in Latin, but then 
turned to English, and when all was done he vigorously 
condensed what he had written. " Gebir " was published 
anonymously at Warwick, as a pamphlet, in 1798, the 
year of the "Lyrical Ballads." Robert Southey was 
among the few who bought it, and he first made 
known its power. In the best sense of the phrase 
"Gebir" was written in classical English, not with a 
search for pompous w^ords of Latin origin to give false 
dignity to style, but with strict endeavour to form 



148 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

terse English lines of apt words well compacted. Many] 
passages appear to have been half thought out in 
Greek or Latin, and Landor published a translation of 
"Gebir" into Latin three or four years after its first ap-' 
pearance. The poem included prophetic visions in, 
which Landor's sympathy with the French Revolution! 
and his contempt for George III. were duly figured. 
At the close of 1805 Landor's father died, and the:; 
young poet became a man of property. He lived 
chiefly at Bath. 

In 1808 Southey and Landor met. Their friend- 
ship remained unbroken. No later differences of 
political or other opinion could touch the delight of 
each in the free powers of his friend. When Spain 
rose to throw off the yoke of Napoleon, Landor's en-j 
thusiasm carried him to Corunna, where he paid for 
the equipment of a thousand volunteers and joined 
with them the Spanish army of the North. After the 
convention of Cintra he returned to England, sharing! 
the disappointment that was expressed by Wordsworth I 
in a vigorous prose pamphlet. Then Landor desired f 
a large Welsh estate, Llanthony Priory, and paid for 
it by not only selling an estate in Staffordshire in- 
herited from his father, but also by divesting himself of i 
part of the inheritance that would come to him at his ; 
mother's death. He began at Llanthony costly im- i 
provements, but still lived much at Bath, where in 1 
1 8 II he married, in quick accordance with a sudden 
fancy, at the age of thirty-six a girl of twenty. Then 
he began his tragedy of " Count Julian." The patriotic 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 149 

Struggle in Spain had caused Southey, Scott and Landor 

ill to deal with the romance of Count Julian who, to 

ivenge wrong done on his daughter by Roderick, the 

ast of the Gothic Kings, called in the Moors. Southey's 

ipic of "Roderick, the last of the Goths," and Landor's 

)lay of Count Julian had both been begun in 18 10, 

md the friends worked in fellowship. Landor was 

dso writing Latin Idyls. His play of "Count Julian" 

vsLS published in 18 12. His "Idyllia" he published 

i,t Oxford in 18 13. After five years, his impetuous 

emper had surrounded him with troubles at Llanthony, 

n which place he had sunk seventy thousand pounds, 

n 18 1 4 Llanthony was vested in trustees, other property 

-as sold, and Landor left England, parting abruptly 

■om his wife because she was unwilling to live in 

ranee. But reconciliation followed on that quarrel; 

Dr a time Mr. and Mrs. Landor lived at Tours, and 

'len for three years at Como, where a son was born 

3 them.. A quarrel with a magistrate obliged Landor 

leave Como. He was then chiefly at Pisa from 

819 until 182 1, and at Pisa he published his Latin 

oems as "Idyllia Heroica," with an Essay De cultu 

iqiie usu Latini sermonis. In 182 i, Italy then sharing 

1 active expression of the revived spirit of nationality, 

andor addressed to the Italian people an Italian 

5say on Representative Government. After Pisa, 

lorence was Landor's home, and there, or in the im- 

lediate neighbourhood, he lived for the next eight 

ars. There he worked at his "Imaginary Con- 

^rsations," of which two volumes were published in 



150 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

1824. The dialogues, between speakers of many lands 
and many ages of the world, were developed through 
a vigorous prose, compact with thought, expressing 
in force and grace and combative opinion an in- 
dividuality that was even the fresher for carrying with 
it everywhere, like Milton's prose, the scholarship and 
the sincerity that gave precision to the style. Landor's 
sentences, often Ciceronian, mark strongly the dif- 
ference between strained rhetoric set forth in Latin 
English, and vigorous thought in English phrase with 
a style based on scholarly attention to the best prose 
of the Latins. The whole mind of Landor found ex- 
pression in these dialogues, which closed with a poem] 
on the national uprisings in Greece and Italy. In 
1826 a second edition appe^ed, with an added third 
volume in 1828. Twenty seven more dialogues fol- 
lowed as a new series in 1829. More dialogues were! 
written, but not published until 1 846. Before Florence! 
was left, Landor had a family of four children. His] 
"Imaginary Conversations" gave him literary fame,: 
and brought new friends who were fascinated by the 
charm of kindly genius under the headstrong im- 
pulsive character. His fiercest wrath, when it had 
way, would end usually in explosions of laughter. No 
man's compliments were more delicate than Landor's, 
and his bluff sincerity gave them unusual value. It was 
at Florence that Lady Blessington made his acquaint- 
ance. He acquired at once a foremost place among 
her many friends. 

Margaret Power, Countess of Blessington, was born 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I5I 

in 1790, the daughter of an Irish squire in the county 
of Waterford. She had beauty, vivacity, and natural 
refinement; but was most unhappily married before 
she was fifteen to an English officer, a Captain Far- 
mer. After his death, she married, in 18 18, an Irish 
peer, the Earl of Blessington, with whom her life became 
luxurious and easy. They spent some years in Italy, 
which yielded to Lady Blessington matter for books. 
Her "Conversations with Lord Byron," were published 
in 1832. She ^vl-ote also "The Idler in Italy" and 
"The Idler in France." After Lord Blessington's death, 
in 1829, Lady Blessington settled at Gore House, 
Kensington. For the remaining twenty years of her 
life, her house was a fashionable centre of intel- 
lectual enjoyment. There she was at home in 
1837, forty eight years old, at the beginning of the 
reign of Victoria. She wrote novels,* she edited 
fashionable annuals, "the Book of Beauty," and 
"the Keepsake," and she and Count D'Orsay had a 
pleasant welcome to her social circle for all the 
talents. Count Alfred D'Orsay, nine years younger 
than Lady Blessington, was the son of a general 
D'Orsay, and was in the French army till he attached 
himself to Lord and Lady Blessington. In 1827 he 
married Lord Blessington's daughter by a former 
marriage, but soon separated from her. In 1829 
he returned with Lady Blessington to England and 
was looked upon as one of the leaders of the fashion- 

* Lady Blessington's Novels are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



152 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

able world. " Count D'Orsay had some skill in draw- 
ing and sculpture and artistic tastes. When Landor 
at Florence made the acquaintance of Lord and Lady 
Blessington, the Count was their companion. 

In 1829, when Lady Blessington settled at Gore 
House, Landor bought, with help of money lent by a 
Welsh admirer, a villa at Fiesole, the Villa Gherardesca. 
Boccaccio's Valley of Ladies was within its grounds. 
There, with an occasional stormy outbreak and litiga- 
tion about water-rights that would have delighted 
Mr. Tulliver, he was happy, and his children were his 
playfellows. At Fiesole he prepared a revised col- 
lection of his poems, which was published by Edward 
Moxon in 1831, "Gebir, Count Julian, and other 
Poems." In 1832 Landor revisited England, but he re- 
turned next year to Fiesole. In 1834 Lady Blessing- 
ton superintended for him the anonymous publication 
of his "Citation and Examination of William Shake- 
speare." Landor joined with it a dialogue between 
Essex and Spenser after Spenser had been driven from 
Kilcolman. Another of Landor's books written at 
Fiesole was his "Pericles and Aspasia," in two volumes 
of letters. The publishing of these was managed for 
him by his friend and sometime neighbour at Fiesole, 
the novelist George Payne Rainsford James,* who had 
published his first novel, "Richelieu," in 1825, when he 
was twenty four years old, and when Walter Scott, by 



* The novels of G. P. R. James are in 21 volumes of the 
Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I53 

whose historical novels he was moved to imitation, 
was still writing. In 1835 Landor, happy in his chil- 
dren but not in his wife, had his home at Fiesole 
broken up by domestic feud. Not enduring his wife's 
speech to him in presence of his children, he parted 
from his family and, after a few months by himself at 
Lucca, came to England. He remained in affectionate 
correspondence with his children, and did not quarrel 
with his wife's relations. He went for a time from 
place to place in England before settling again, and 
then, at the beginning of the reign of Victoria, in 
October 1837, being nearly 63 years old, he returned 
to Bath. In the same year he published his Imaginary 
Conversations between Petrarch and Boccaccio, sup- 
posed to have been held on five successive days, which 
he called "the Pentameron," adding to the book five 
various dramatic scenes, "Pentalogia." When in Lon- 
don, Landor was happiest as guest at Gore House, 
where at the crowded assemblies he came to know 
men of the rising generation, and where, among others, 
he first found his friend John Forster, afterwards his 
Avarmhearted biographer, and Charles Dickens, who 
transferred one or two of his outward peculiarities to 
Mr. Boythorn in Bleak House. 



154 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER V. 

JOURNALISTS OF THE ELDER GENERATION, ESSAYISTS 
AND POETS. 

We turn now to a group of men who passed as 
elders into the reign of Victoria, which owed much to 
them for the quickening of intellectual discussion. 
Francis Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, John Wilson and 
Thomas De Quincey, forefathers of the modern race 
of quarterly and monthly journalists. 

Francis Jeffrey was bojrn in Edinburgh in 1773. 
At the Edinburgh High School he was under Mr. 
Eraser, who afterwards boasted that from three suc- 
cessive classes, of four years each, he turned out Scott, 
Jeffrey and Brougham. He remembered Jeffrey as "a 
little clever anxious boy, always near the top of the 
class, and who never lost a place without shedding 
tears." There were 120 boys taught in the class, 
under one master, without help of an usher. In 1787 
Jeffrey was sent to Glasgow University, which he left 
for a session at Oxford. There he took pains to get 
rid of his Scottish accent, and, said Lord Holland, at 
nineteen he had lost the broad Scotch but gained 
only the narrow English. From Oxford he returned 
to Edinburgh, in 1792, and studied law. Having 
joined the debating society of the University, the 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 55 

Speculative Society, which had been founded nearly 
thirty years before, he read five papers in it and 
was much influenced by its young energies. In 1794 
he was called to the Scottish bar, and hoped for 
practice. 

On the first of November 1801 Jeffrey married a 
second cousin, Catherine Wilson, daughter of the Pro- 
fessor of Church History at St. Andrews. His profes- 
sion up to that time had never brought him in £ 100 
a year. He and his wife set up their home on the 
third story of No. 18 Buccleuch Place. He furnished 
his study for £ 'j. 18, his dining room for ^^13. 8, and 
his drawing room for £22. ig. In that establish- 
ment "the Edinburgh Review" was born. It was the 
happiest of homes, to which of evenings came quick 
witted friends, apt for "plain living and high think- 
ing." One of them was Sydney Smith, who happened 
then to be preacher at the episcopal chapel in Edin- 
burgh. Sydney Smith was born in 1771 at Woodford 
in Essex, and had his education at Winchester School 
and New College Oxford, where he obtained a fellow- 
ship. He took orders and began his ministry in 1794 
as curate at Nether Avon in Wiltshire, not very far from 
Stonehenge. Mr. Hicks Beach was Squire of the parish, 
and Sydney Smith himself afterwards, before a collection 
of his own essays from the "Edinburgh Review," told 
briefly what followed. "When first I went into the church 
I had a curacy in the middle of Salisbury Plain. The 
Squire of the parish took a fancy to me, and after I 
had served it two years, he engaged me as tutor to his 



156 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

eldest son, and it was arranged that I and his son 
should proceed to the University of Weimar. Before 
reaching our destination, Germany was disturbed by 
war, and in stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, 
where I remained five years. The principles of the 
French Revolution were then fully afloat, and it is 
impossible to conceive a more violent and agitated 
state of society. Among the first persons with whom 
I became acquainted were Lord Jeffrey, Lord Murray 
(late Lord Advocate for Scotland) and Lord Brougham; 
all of them maintaining opinions upon political sub- 
jects a little too liberal for the dynasty of Dundas, 
then exercising supreme political power over the 
northern division of the island. One day we hap- 
pened to meet in the eighth or ninth story or flat" 
(playful exaggeration of the third) "inBuccleuch Place, 
the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I pro- 
posed that we should set up a 'Review'; this was 
acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, 
and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the 
first number of the 'Edinburgh Review.'" The first 
direct suggestion of a Review may have come from 
Sydney Smith, but the first number or two had no 
sole editor; the projectors managed it among them. 
There had been an "Edinburgh Review" of which the 
first number appeared in January 1755, the second 
and last number in January 1756. No. i of that 
Review had included a slight notice by Adam Smith 
of Johnson's Dictionary. The desire of the founders 
of the new Review was to deal with politics as well 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 57 

as literature, and to wage energetic war against all 
wrongs for which they sought the remedies. No. i 
appeared on the loth of October 1802. It contained 
seven articles by Sydney Smith, four by Leonard 
Horner and five by Jeffrey. Four have been ascribed 
to Brougham, but it is doubtful whether Brougham 
was among the very first who wrote. When he did 
presently join in the work, he was one of the most 
active writers, equal to the production of a whole 
number by himself, if need were. The first three 
numbers were given to Archibald Constable, the 
publisher, who pledged himself to take the risk of 
producing four. While the freshness and courage of 
the new Review, the wit and wisdom applied in it 
to foremost questions of the day, were spreading its 
fame to London, Jeffrey himself was in his usual or 
natural state of what Lord Cockburn calls "a lively 
argumentative despair." Jeffrey himself once wrote 
to Malthus, "I am very much in a state of despair, 
while I have scarcely any actual anxiety." While 
Constable was being asked by Jeffrey whether he could 
venture to print a fourth number, Sydney Smith was 
telling him that he must maintain and advance the 
success of the Review by paying ^ 10 a sheet to the 
writers in it. As the success grew rapidly, the pay- 
ment was raised to ^ 16 a sheet as minimum, 
but two thirds of the writing was paid for at a 
higher rate. The average rate of payment for a sheet 
under Jeffrey's editorship was twenty or twenty five 
guineas. 



158 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

When the first number of "the Edinburgh Review" 
was on the point of appearing Jeffrey had a son born, 
in September 1802, who died in a few weeks. His 
underlying tenderness of character made the memory 
of this loss ever afterwards a cause of nervous anxiety 
about children's complaints in the households of his 
friends. Jeffrey's wife died in August 1805, when he 
was rising at the bar, and as its first editor, carrying 
on the Review to high success. He acquired his wide 
influence by nervous energy in the pursuit of worthy 
aims, by skill with the pen, judgment in politics, tact 
in relation with other men. His tact was due to a 
temper essentially kind and sensitive, while there was 
honest freedom everywhere in expression of opinion. 
His quick sensibility gave him a rare power of trans- 
forming face and voice, in playful mimicry. If he did 
not like the work of his best friend, and had to review 
it, he could not review dishonestly. He was not a 
man of genius, and his judgments in literature have 
not stood the test of time. His censures were emphatic, 
although there the working of his gentleness of character 
not seldom crumbled away some of his condemnation 
before all was said. None, however, would have inferred 
from the tone of the reviewer that, off paper, he was one 
of the kindest and most sensitive of men. As he rose at 
the bar in Edinburgh, after vain endeavours to satisfy 
society with the set of his wig over black bushy hair, 
he pleaded without his wig, and was for fifteen or 
twenty years almost alone in doing so. In 1829 he 
became acknowledged leader of the Scottish bar, and 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 59 

was made Dean of the Faculty. With other office in 
view, he then resigned his office of Editor of "the 
Edinburgh Review." In 1830 he was made Lord Ad- 
vocate and entered Parliament. After the Reform Bill 
he was the first member for Edinburgh. But in the 
parliamentary conflict he was not at ease. His health 
also had failed, and he gave up political ambition. 
In 1834 ^^ became a Scotch judge, and was known 
thenceforth, by the title due in Scotland to his office, 
as Lord Jeffrey. That was his position at the acces- 
sion of Queen Victoria. He was among the veterans 
of Literature, honoured for what he was, not living 
upon the reputation of the past, until his death in 
January 1850. When Jeffrey, its first editor, resigned 
his charge over "the Edinburgh Review," in 1829, his 
successor was Macvey Napier, one of the principal 
clerks of the Court of Session at Edinburgh and Pro- 
fessor of Conveyancing in the University. He had 
shown his literary skill and powers of work by super- 
intending a new edition of the Encyclopsedia Britan- 
nica. He was Editor of ''the Edinburgh Review" from 
1829 during the rest of his life. But he died, before 
Jeffrey, in 1847. 

In the first years of "the Edinburgh Review" 
Walter Scott was among Jeffrey's friends, and he also 
was a contributor, for intellectual sympathies were 
stronger than any differences of political opinion. 
Scott was then publishing his Border Minstrelsy, and 
editing Thomas of Erceldoune. Like Jeffrey he prac- 
tised in the law courts and loved literature. In 1805 



l60 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Scott's genius flashed out in "the Lay of the Last 
Minstrel," and he suddenly attained wide fame. But 
when Scott's "Marmion" appeared, his friend Jeffrey 
did not like it, thought it unpatriotic, and found fault 
with it in "the Edinburgh Review." When the criticism 
appeared, Jeffrey sent it to Scott with a generous and 
honest little note. Scott did not abate in cordiality 
towards Jeffrey, but showed very distinctly that he had 
lost goodwill towards the Review. He fancied that 
he had been among the writers for it upon the under- 
standing that their papers would be rather literary 
than political, imagined they had broken faith with 
him, and ceased to contribute. At that time the 
founder of the publishing house of Murray was a 
young man with a small shop in Fleet Street and un- 
bounded energies. John Murray desired a share in 
the profit and credit of publishing the works of the 
new favourite, Walter Scott. He made advances, at 
last found his way to Edinburgh, and heard Scott's 
grumbling at a dinner table over the Whig Review, at 
a time when Jeffrey's grumbling at "Marmion"was fresh 
in his mind. Murray leapt at once to the conception 
of a Review on the other side to match the Edinburgh, 
with Scott himself promptly engaged for a contributor. 
In that way "the Quarterly Review" came into life. 
The first conception passed rapidly on to birth of the. 
new journal, of which No. i appeared in February, 
1809. — Its first editor was William Gifford, a man 
humbly born, who owed his rise to friends won by his 
conspicuous abilities. He had proved himself a keen 



m 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. l6l 

satirist and a good English scholar, and he seemed 
to John Murray and the promoters of his new Review 
the right man to compete as editor with Francis 
Jeffrey. 

Gifford died in 1826. His successor in charge of 
"the Quarterly" was John Gibson Lockhart, who was 
its editor from 1825 to 1853. Lockhart's age was 
onlyjbrty-twp at the beginning of the reign of Victoria. 
He was born in 1793, studied at Glasgow where his 
father was minister of the College Church, and after 
three years at the Glasgow University won a Bursary 
that enabled him to continue his studies at Baliol 
College, Oxford. He left Oxford for Edinburgh, read 
there for the Scottish bar, and was called in 18 16. 
In the following year his keen relish for literature 
brought him into active fellowship with John Wilson 
and the men who were in that year founding the 
fortunes of "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine." He 
was then a young man of four- and- twenty, thin, eager, 
skilful in caricature with pen and pencil, and with an 
outward manner that seemed cold and supercilious. 
For his gift of stinging, he was figured by his com- 
rades as the Scorpion, but they and other of Lock- 
hart's intimate friends found good reason to like him 
heartily. In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of 
Sir Walter Scott. In 1823 he published a volume of 
Spanish Ballads, translated into English verse with a 
poetic vigour that has caused good Spanish scholars 
to doubt whether they may not be better than the 
originals. He published also four good novels, "Valerius," 

0/ English Literature. 1 1 



1 62 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in 1 82 1, "Adam Blair," in 1822, "Reginald Dalton" in 
1823, and "Matthew Wald," in 1824. In 1828 he 
published a "Life of Burns." When Sir Walter Scott 
died in 1832 he left his son-in-law sole literary exe- 
cutor, and at the beginning of the reign of Victoria, 
John Gibson Lockhart was producing the seven volumes 
of his full and elaborate "Life of Scott." 

John Wilson, foremost of the group of men busy in 
1 8 1 7 over the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine, 
was about eight years older than Lockhart. Like his 
friend Thomas De Quincey he earned his place in 
literature as a journalist, and the points of likeness 
and difference between these two friends make it con- 
venient to speak of them together. They were born 
in the same year 1785, John Wilson, the son of a 
gauze manufacturer at Paisley, Thomas De Quincey, 
son of a Manchester merchant. John Wilson was edu- 
cated chiefly at a school kept in the manse of the 
neighbouring parish of Mearns. His teacher did not 
check the love of outdoor life and nature that bright- 
ened his work in afterlife. If the pupil shut up his 
Greek and said, "I should like to go fishing," the 
teacher said, "Go, fish." When twelve years old, Wilson 
left Mearns for the Glasgow University. His father 
had died, leaving him <5£'50,ooo. He was at Glasgow 
for six years, in Professor Jardine's family, and was 
eighteen years old when he entered as a gentleman 
commoner at Magdalene College, Oxford. He was at 
Oxford for the next three years and a half. At twenty- 
one he was one of the athletes of the University. He 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 63 

lad a broad chest, much red-brown hair, enormous 
A^hiskers, his height was five foot eleven, and he was 
:he best man at a long jump in all England, doing 
:wenty-three feet on a dead level. Once, when in- 
sulted in the street as he came from a dinner-party in a 
London square, he knocked down his assailant and, to 
ivoid question over a street row, proceeded as he was 
:o Oxford, and reached his college gate as it was 
Deing opened in the morning. His studies, like his 
Dleasures, were fastened upon heartily. He graduated, 
md in 1807, settled at Elleray by Windermere, aged 
.wenty two, with ample means and vigorous of mind 
md body. Thomas De Quincey was the fifth of six 
:hildren of a Manchester merchant who died of con- 
sumption at the age of 39, leaving to his widow and 
^amily a^30,ooo and a house near Manchester at 
^reenhays. This son Thomas was precocious and sen- 
sitive. He was educated at home and at the Bath 
jrammar School. At fifteen he was eager to go to 
3xford, but it was felt that his share of the patrimony 
lardly yielded enough to meet University expenses 
vithout aid from an exhibition, which could certainly 
oe earned at the Manchester Grammar School if he 
vent there for three years. He went most unwillingly. 
Se worked hard in his own way, and before he left 
school his master said of him to a friend, "That boy 
:ould harangue an Athenian mob better than you or 
' could address an English one." But it was an abid- 
ng grievance to him that an enthusiastic head master 
:ontinued his lessons into the time left for exercise 



164 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

between school and dinner. This, he said, disordered 
his liver, and when they gave him a dose of medicine, 
that he described as "a tiger drench," his cup of 
wrath was full. He borrowed five pounds and ran 
away to Chester; wandered into Wales; found his way\ 
to London. There in his utter poverty and solitude 
he had divers adventures, and first felt the enjoy- 
ment of a dose of opium, given to him at a chemist's^ 
shop in Oxford Street, to relieve rheumatic pains of 
the head and face. He was at last found and re- 
covered. In October 1803 he went to Oxford, where^ 
his name was on the books of Worcester College until 
1808. But he studied in his own way, sought neither 
University honours nor College friends. Even his 
tutor he kept at a distance, confining intercourse be- 
tween them to the matter of their studies. De Quincey^ 
began at Oxford his habit of taking opium as a means' 
of intellectual excitement. The depression following 
the exaltation invites to another dose. The body, dried 
and enfeebled by the action of the drug, calls for in- 
creased doses; opium being one of the drugs of which 
what is called a tolerance becomes established, so that' 
doses can sometimes be gradually increased until the 
daily allowance becomes more than would suffice for 
poisoning a score of people. In the year before he 
left Oxford, De Quincey made the acquaintance of 
Coleridge, Wordsworth and Southey, and when he was 
free to choose his dwelling-place, he chose, in the 
winter of 1 808, the little cottage at Grasmere in which 
Wordsworth began housekeeping at the Lakes, and 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 65 

tvhich had then been left by Wordsworth for Allan 
Bank. Wordsworth's old cottage — it was called Dove 
plottage because it had once been a little inn called 
;he Dove and Olive Branch — was De Quincey's home 
Tom 1808 till 1829, and he continued to rent it until 
1836. Here, by the year 1813, his use of opium had 
yrown into a daily habit. In 18 16 he was taking eight 
housand drops a day of laudanum; eight thousand 
irops are within very little of a pint. But when he 
narried, in that year, 18 16, he reduced his allowance 
o a thousand drops. 

John Wilson was in those days De Quincey's nearest 
riend. He had first found him in Wordsworth's study 
*in a sailor's dress, manifestly in robust health, and 
vearing upon his countenance a powerful expression 
)f ardour and animated intelligence, mixed w^ith much 
;ood nature." De Quincey and Wilson both loved the 
)oets, looked up with reverence to Wordsworth, and in 
heir unlike bodies had eager minds. So Wilson strode 
)ver the hills with De Quincey trotting by his side, 
md the friendship lasted. In 1 8 11 John Wilson mar- 
•ied, and early in 181 2 published his poem of "the 
;sle of Palms" that helped to pay for his wedding 
rip. The " Isle of Palms " shows action upon the young 
)oet's mind of the two influences of Scott and Words- 
vorth, and has its plot formed on suggestion of those 
)roblems of civilization that were common in litera- 
ure at the turn of the century, and of which Kotze- 
)ue's "La Perouse" is an example. Children were 
)orn, and John Wilson was enjoying life by Winder- 



1 66 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

mere; with boats, a little fleet of his own, upon the j 
lake; with vigorous enjoyment of his strength of j 
limb; and, as one of his poems shows, his inner lifej 
stirred to the depths in nightlong mountain -walks ! 
beneath the stars. Then came to him the most for- 
tunate event of his life. In 1815, at the age of thirty, 
he lost all his money by the failure of an uncle inj 
whose hands its management was placed. John Wil- 
son made no complaint, but he gave up his idler en 
joyment and buckled to work. He left Elleray withi 
his family, and was for a time under strict discipline 
in his mother's patriarchal household at 53 Queen 
Street. He was called to the bar a year before John] 
Gibson Lockhart. He published in 18 16 a dramatic^] 
poem, "the City of the Plague," and was ready to 
thrive by Law or Literature, when there came the op- 
portunity for which he had not long to wait. In Decem- J 
ber 1 8 1 6 William Blackwood, the publisher, entertained 
the proposals of two gentlemen, fierce James Cleghorn, 
known as the editor of a Farmer's Magazine, and mild 
Thomas Pringle, a writer and poet, who afterwards vi- 
sited South Africa. They suggested the want of a 
new Tory monthly magazine for Edinburgh, to super- 
sede "the Scots Magazine" which was Whig and had 
become feeble. "The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine" 
appeared, therefore, in April 18 17, under the manage- 
ment of its projectors. After the second number editors 
and publishers were at feud. In June the publisher 
advertised that at the end of three months from that 
date the Magazine would be discontinued. The edi- 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 67 

tors were then persuaded to take ^125 for their share 
in the copyright, and the seventh number, first of a 
new series, appeared with its name aUered to "Black- 
wood's Edinburgh Magazine," the publisher keeping 
in his own hands all privileges of editor, and looking 
about for vigorous articles from the cleverest young 
Tories he could find. The first number of "Black- 
wood" was alive with dashing personality. It attacked 
Coleridge and Leigh Hunt, and it gave a history of 
itself in the form of a "Translation from an Ancient 
Chaldee MS.," in which it parodied the style of the 
Book of Revelation. Mr. Blackwood of 17 Princes 
Street was a man clothed in plain apparel who stood 
in the door of his house, and his name was as it had 
been the colour of ebony, and there came up to him 
two great beasts — the former editors, "the one beast 
was like unto a lamb, and the other like unto a bear." 
When Blackwood called other friends to his help the 
"two beasts" went over to Constable, "a man who was 
crafty in counsel," publisher of the Edinburgh Review, 
and edited his "Scots Magazine." Blackwood took 
heart and was encouraged by his friends, but perplexed 
by multitude of advisers, until the veiled editor ap- 
peared and summoned his instruments. The first was 
John Wilson, who is thus described: "And the first 
which came was after the likeness of the beautiful 
leopard, from the valley of the palm-trees, whose going 
forth was comely as the greyhound, and his eyes as 
the lightning of fiery flame." Lockhart was thus figured : 
"There came also, from a far country, the scorpion. 



1 68 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

which delighteth to sting the faces of men, that he 
might sting sorely the countenance of the man which 
is crafty and of the two beasts." This whimsical piece, 
representing the beginning of the war of Whigs and 
Tories from the camps of Constable and Blackwood, 
included about forty sketches of leading Edinburgh 
men in verses that shocked many a reader as irreverent 
caricatures of the phraseology of the Apocalypse. John 
Wilson was the leading spirit in the magazine. By 
the end of i8ig, its prosperity* enabled him with his 
wife and five children to set up a home of his own, 
and in the next year, when he was 35 years old, 
though he knew nothing of the subject he proposed to 
teach, he was set up, on the Tory side, as candidate 
for the vacant chair of Moral Philosophy in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. Though his opponent was Sir 
William Hamilton, he was elected by a Tory Town 
Council, and at his first lecture conquered a hostile 
throng of students by the simple manliness with which 
he set about his work. He had studied hard during 
the vacation and prepared his course. Thenceforth, as 
Professor Wilson, his frank kindliness made him a 
power over the hearts of the young. As " Christopher 
North," his wit and humour, his poetic sense of nature, 
his heartiness not only in hard hitting but in generosity 
where he saw need, not only in the "Noctes Am- 
brosianae" — Nights at Ambrose's Tavern — but in 
papers of all kinds, gave to the pages of Blackwood 

* Tales from Blackwood are in the Tauclinitz Collection* 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 69 

health and vigour. He died in April 1854. He was 
ill in 1852 when Macaulay was rejected at Edinburgh, 
and rose from a sick-bed to vote for him, Whig as he 
was, because he was ashamed of the cry raised against 
a worthy man of letters. 

De Quincey who had published the "Confessions 
of an English Opium Eater," in 182 1, in "the London 
Magazine," lived chiefly by journalism. He wrote about 
fifty papers in "Blackwood," left Grasmere in 1829, 
was drawn to Edinburgh by the friendship of John 
Wilson, and in 1843 settled at the cottage Scott once 
had occupied at Lasswade near Edinburgh. He died 
in 1859. His collected magazine papers constitute his 
works in 14 volumes. 

John Foster, who was born in the year of Words- 
worth's birth, 1770, and died in 1843, the year of 
Southey's death, was essayist of another kind. He 
was of Yorkshire family, educated at Bristol at the 
Baptist College, and thenceforth a preacher. He is 
remembered for his thoughtful essays "on Decision of 
Character" and other subjects that directly concern 
the building up of citizens. His Essay "on the Evils 
of Popular Ignorance," striking the same note, allied 
his thoughtful teaching to the work of men who were 
labouring for the advance of education. 

James Montgomery, a year younger than Words- 
worth, was born at Irvine in Ayrshire, in November 
1 7 7 1 . He was the son of a Moravian Missionary, who 
left him at a Moravian school in Yorkshire to be 



170 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

educated while he went to preach to the negro 
slaves in the West Indies. Montgomery never again 
saw father or mother. They died in the West 
Indies. The boy was placed by the brotherhood in 
a general shop kept by a Moravian at Mirfield. He 
was a verse smitten boy, and as his verses multiplied 
his literary ambition rose, and he set off to walk to 
London in search of a publisher. On the way he 
was obliged to halt, and take a situation in another 
general shop. At last the youth and his poems 
reached London and a publisher was found. He did 
not want the poems, but offered Montgomery a place 
as shopman. Montgomery was glad to accept it, 
and from this position transferred his services in 1792 
to a Mr. Gales in Sheffield, a bookseller, who had set 
up a newspaper, "the Sheffield Register." Montgomery 
managed the printing of this, and also wrote in it. 
The times were astir with revolutionary hope; the 
English government, in dread lest fire should spread 
from France to England, was seeking to put down 
the expression of distasteful opinions, Mr. Gales had 
to leave England to escape government prosecution. 
His assistant, James Montgomery, continued the paper; 
with a significant change of its name to the symbol 
of hope, he called it "the Sheffield Iri§." He was 
prosecuted, fined and imprisoned for a song on the 
Fall of the Bastille and an account given in the 
"Iris" of a riot at Sheffield. But after his release he 
went on with his paper, and published verses written 
in prison as "Prison Amusements." Thenceforth James 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I7I 

Montgomery, as journalist and poet, was a leader of 
thought in Sheffield, with an influence extending over 
England. His enthusiasm for the better life of man 
on earth was associated with a deep religious feeling. 
His volumes of poems "the Ocean," in 1805, "the 
Wanderer in Switzerland," in 1806, "the West Indies," 
in 1809, "the World before the Flood," in 18 12, 
though he was attacked in the "Edinburgh Review," 
deserved the reputation they still hold. In 18 19 
followed "Greenland," a poem in five cantos, in 1828 
"The Pelican Island," and in 1836, the year before 
the accession of Victoria, there was a collected edition 
of his Poems in three volumes. A volume of Original 
Hymns, published in 1846, was added by him to the 
literature of the present reign. Sir Robert Peel made 
the poet's latter years easier by a pension of ^ 1 50, 
and he died on the 30th of April, 1854. 

Thomas Campbell, who in the last year of the 
eighteenth century sang "the Pleasures of Hope," 
was six years younger than James Montgomery, but 
the elder man outlived the younger by ten years. 
Thomas Campbell, led by his first great success to 
become a working man of letters, had produced occa- 
sional volumes of poetry finished with the utmost care. 
"Gertrude of Wyoming" and other poems appeared in 
1809; "Theodric" with other poems in 1824, and there 
was a new edition of his poetical works in 1828, 
when the copyrights had all reverted to him. But 
while he thus cared for his place among the poets he 
was earning by hurried task work, much of it done as 



172 OF E^,TGL1SH LITERATURE 

editor of magazines. He edited for some time "the 
New Monthly." In 18 19 he was producing his seven 
vokmies of "Specimens of the British Poets," with 
critical essays. Charles James Fox obtained for him 
a pension of ^200 a year. In 1826 he was honoured 
by election to the dignity of Rector of his old Uni- 
versity, Glasgow. At the same time he became a 
leader among those who were engaged in the founda- 
tion of the London University. In those days the 
honours of the English Universities were denied to 
dissenters, and all public school education in England 
held by the old tradition that associated it entirely 
with the established form of the Church in which it 
had its origin. The dissenters proposed a University 
in London for themselves. Brougham Avould have 
followed their lead, but Campbell urged, against many 
difficulties, the nobler conception of a London Uni- 
versity tied to no party and no sect, but offering to all 
the highest culture, and his view prevailed. In 1828, 
when Campbell had a pleasure of hope fulfilled by the 
opening of the building designed for the London Uni- 
versity, he lost his wife, and at the end of the year he 
was honoured by election for the third time to the 
Lord Rectorship of the University of Glasgow. At the 
end of 1830 Campbell had ceased to edit "the New 
Monthly," of which he said, "it was impossible to con- 
tinue editor without interminable scrapes, together 
with a law-suit now and then." The editorship had 
added £ 600 a year to a limited and encumbered in- 
come. Campbell meant to escape from slavery, write 



m THE RF.IGN OF VICTORIA. I 73 

at his own will and live content upon a little. But 
when he broke from his old relations a heavy balance 
against him made itself felt, and he was compelled to 
fall back upon other hackwork, and knew many 
troubles. Stirred by the taking of Warsaw in 1831, 
he helped with money, ill to be spared, and with a 
manly sympathy. By the Poles themselves he was 
declared in their journals to be the man in England 
to whom they owed most gratitude. He then set on 
foot the formation of "the Polish Association," and was 
enabled by the generosity of his rich brother poet 
Samuel Rogers to pay £ 500 for a third share in the 
proprietorship of a magazine, "the Metropolitan," that 
he was editing. Discovering in good time that the 
share was worth less than nothing, he with difficulty 
got the money back, and repaid it to Rogers. He set 
to work then on the Life of Mrs. Siddons, which was 
published in 1834; but did not cease to edit "the 
Metropolitan," which came soon afterwards into the 
possession of Captain Marryat, a kindly friend. Camp- 
bell at this time was practising in lodgings a close 
economy, and paid off in three years £ goo of debt. 
After the publication of the Life of Mrs. Siddons, in 
1834, 1"^^ took a trip to Paris and was tempted to run 
farther south to Algiers. He started with close and 
doubtful calculations about payment of the costs of 
travel, but news of a legacy came to relieve his doubts, 
and he returned to London with his weak health 
strengthened. Then he made a book of his experiences, 
"Letters from the South," published in 1837. Thus at 



174 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the age of sixty he was continuing his life into the 
reign of Queen Victoria. 

During the first two years of the reign Campbell 
was steadily working in chambers, at 6i Lincoln's 
Inn Fields, upon his "Life of Petrarch." He planned 
also an edition of his poems for the people, which 
was published by Edward Moxon in 1839, printed in 
double-columns and at the price of two shillings. He 
Avas at work also on a new poem, "The Pilgrim of 
Glencoe," published, with other poems then first col- 
lected, in 1842. In 1840 the sense of solitude of 
chambers had driven Campbell to take a house in Pim- 
lico, and establish himself in it with a niece, whom he 
had educated, for his housekeeper. This was his last 
home in England. "The Pilgrim of Glencoe" was coldly 
received. Campbell had relied on profit from it. He 
had cashed expectancies, and felt that the costs of his 
new house would be beyond his means. Health and 
vigour were failing. The sale of his collected poems 
fell away, and, while waiting until he could get rid of 
his house, he was planning a subscription edition of 
his poems. But the author of "the Pleasures of Me- 
mory," always a good friend to the author of "the 
Pleasures of Hope," brought Campbell into relations 
with Edward Moxon, the poet's publisher. Edward 
Moxon published a volume of Sonnets of his own, 
and if 'they are not immortal they were signs of a 
love for the poets that affected pleasantly his business 
relations with them. Here also the publisher made 
generous arrangements that relieved the poet of much 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I ye 

care. Edward Moxon was one of the few friends who 
crossed to Boulogne to take leave of the poet when 
he lay there dying. He died on the 15th of Tune 
1844. 

Thus far the press of forward battle had been 
urged m their youth by those of whom the youngest 
combatant was sixty years old in 1837. After the ac- 
cession of Victoria they still joined in the strife on 
which It had become the part of other men to spend 
the fresh force of their lives. As they fell, men of 
the next generation pressed into their places. 



176 OF ENCxLTSH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER VL 

OF WOMEN WHO WROTE IN THE EARLY PART 
OF THE REIGN. 

Joanna Baillie and Miss Edgeworth were the 
veterans of literature who represented in 1837 the 
woman's part in the work of civilization. Eldest 
among the younger women was Barbara Hofland, born ! 
in 1770, of like age therefore with Wordsworth. 
Frances Trollope was then 59; Lucy Aikin, 56; Lady ' 
Morgan, 54; Mary Somerville, 45; Mary Howitt, 37; j 
Harriet Martineau and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, other- 
wise unlike, were alike in being 35 years old; Anna 
Maria Hall was ^^; Caroline Elizabeth Norton, 29 
and Elizabeth Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, who 
has earned the first rank among English poetesses, was 
also twenty-nine. There was also Lady Charlotte Eliza- 
beth Guest, afterwards Lady Charlotte Schreiber, who 
in the year 1838, at the age of about five-and-twenty, 
enriched English Literature with a translation of old 
Welsh Romances from a MS. in the Library of Jesus 
College, Oxford, — the Llyfr Coch o Hergest, the Red 
Book of Hergest, — as "the Mabinogion," stories for the 
young, "mab" being Welsh for a child. From one of 
the tales in this collection, "Geraint, the Son of 
Erbin," Tennyson framed his poem of "Geraint and 
Enid." 



> i 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 77 

Lady Morgan, born in 1 783 as Sydney Owenson, the 
daughter of an Irish song\vriter, acquired reputation 
in 1806 by her third novel "the Wild Irish Girl" and 
then became, as a writer of light literature, active and 
popular, expressing liberal opinions. In 18 11 she 
married Sir Charles Morgan, a physician with literary 
tastes. She died in 1859, and in the early years of 
the reign of Victoria, like Lady Blessington, she folded 
in her drawing-room at evening a little flock of authors. 
Her Memoirs were published after her death.* 

Mary Somerville was the first to shake man's com- 
fortable faith in the incapacity of women for scientific 
thought. She was the daughter of Vice Admiral Fair- 
fax, was born at Jedburgh in 1792, and was sent to 
a school at Musselburgh. She had a natural taste for 
the study of mathematics, which was quickened by 
association with the studies of a young seaman whom 
she married early in life, Captain Greig. She married 
afterwards a cousin. Dr. Somerville. In 1826 Mrs. 
Somerville had presented a memoir to the Royal 
Society on the magnetising power of the more re- 
frangible solar rays. In 1831 she produced an English 
paraphrase of Laplace's "Mechanism of the Heavens," 
begun at the suggestion of Lord Brougham for in- 
struction of the people. If it had not outgrown the 
required limits it would have been issued as one of 
the cheap volumes of the "Society for the Diffusion of 
Useful Knowledge." In a book, wholly her own, on 

* Lady Morgan's Memoirs are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 

Of Englixk Liierature. 12 



178 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

"the Connexion of the Physical Sciences" first 
published in 1834, ^^^ republished in many editions, 
Mrs. Somerville applied exact knowledge to a broad 
generalization that should help men to draw from the 
outer world some sense of the harmonies of the uni- 
verse. Her "Physical Geography" belongs to the 
reign of Victoria. It was published in 1848, and its 
aim, like that of the preceding work, was to enlarge 
culture, in this case by widening the sense of those 
great operations of nature which immediately affect 
the conditions of the life of man. Mrs. Somerville's 
clearness of expression and habitual breadth of view 
gave a charm to her books that made them for many 
years a powerful aid to the advance of knowledge 
into wisdom. In her later life Mrs. Somerville settled 
in Italy, and she died at Naples in November, 1872. 

Lucy Aikin was probably drawn into literature by 
the examples of her aunt, Mrs. Barbauld, and her father 
Dr. John Aikin, a physician who made literature his 
business. Dr. Aikin edited a magazine, took part in 
editing a biographical dictionary, and devised a po- 
pular book for the young, called "Evenings at Home." 
His daughter Lucy began to write for magazines when 
she was seventeen, and obtained credit in 18 18 for 
the first of her books of Historical Memoirs, "Memoirs . 
of the Court of Queen Elizabeth." She continued the ' 
series with "Memoirs of the Court of James I." in 
1822, the year of her father's death, and published 
in the following year a memoir of her father. She 
then settled at Hampstead, and lived chiefly there 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 179 

until her death, having Joanna Baillie until 1851 for 
friend and neighbour. In 1825 her father's sister, 
Mrs. Barbauld, died. She had been born Anna Laetitia 
Aikin, and Lucy Aikin published her works with a 
memoir. In 1833 the series of Historical Memoirs 
was continued with "Memoirs of the Court of Charles I." 
The Life of Addison in 1843 and a volume of Holi- 
day Stories in 1858 were the only books published 
by Lucy Aikin in the reign of Victoria. She died in 
January 1865. 

Mrs. Holland had died in 1844 at the age of 74. 
Hers also had been a literary life of modest useful- 
ness. As Barbara Wreaks, of Sheffield, she had mar- 
ried and become Mrs. Hoole. In two years she was a 
widow, and had to support herself She published some 
poems in 1 805, and set up a school at Harrogate. In 
1808 she married the landscape painter, Thomas 
Christopher Holland, and her pen was companion to 
his brush in the support of home. In 18 13 she 
published a story for young readers, called "The Son 
of a Genius," that was very widely popular. After- 
wards came novels and tales, including a characteristic 
series of stories in one volume designed for the 
pleasure of young girls, who were also to draw from 
them some aid to a wholesome moral training. They 
were often named after the qualities they recom- 
mended, "Decision," "Patience," "Fortitude," "Energy." 
More elaborate novels had been written by Mrs. Opie, 
also a painter's wife with the same openly didactic 
purpose, "Temper" was one of them published in 18 12;' 



l8p OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Mary Brunton had published "Self Control," in 1811, 
and followed with "Discipline," in 1814; in 1823 
"Lying in all its Branches" was another of Mrs. Opie's 
books, and in 1828 there was "Detraction displayed." 
Mrs. Opie was only a year older than Mrs. Hofland, 
^nd outlived her, for she died in 1853, but she did 
not continue to write after 1837. J^^^ Porter, who, 
with her sister Anna Maria, had been active and po- 
pular as novelist in the early years of the century, 
also survived until 1850, but she did not write under 
Victoria. Even Harriet Lee, who was born in 1756, 
and with her sister Sophia produced popular short 
stories, as " Canterbury Tales," between the year 1797 
and 1805, was living, though not writing, under Vic- 
toria, and died at the age of 95 in 1851. Mrs. Hemans 
had died in 1835, closing a sad life at the age of forty 
one. Her Poetical Remains were published in 1836 
with a short memoir. Two volumes of Memorials of 
her were also published in the same year byMr. H. F. 
Chorley.* The strain of sentiment in Mrs. Hemans's 
verse was associated with domestic feeling; the sad 
undertone was a real note of life in her. In Laetitia 
Elizabeth Landon, admired by readers of Keepsakes 
and Poetical Albums as L. E. L., the sentiment was 
more conventional, though harmless and graceful of 
its kind. In 182 1, when she was but a girl of nine- 
teen, and Byron was still living, she published the 



* A Selection from Mrs. Hemans's Poems is in the Tauchnit2; 
Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. l8l 

"Fate of Adelaide," and from that time her occasional 
verses in Magazines and Annuals were supported by- 
occasional books of verse, "the Improvisatrice " in 

1824, the year of Byron's Death, "the Troubadour" in 

1825, "the Venetian Bracelet" in 1829, each with a 
little following of "other Poems," and the "Lay of the 
Peacock" in 1835. Miss Landon produced three 
Novels in the reign of William IV., and in 1837 P^^" 
lished "Traits and Trials of Early Life." Her mind 
was acquiring health and strength when she married, 
in June 1838, the Governor of Cape Coast Castle, Mr. 
George Maclean. She went out with her husband to 
Cape Coast Castle and died there within four months 
of her wedding day. 

A tendency to artificial sentiment was certainly not 
the fault of Mrs. Frances Trollope as a novelist. There 
was a practical heartiness in her work that gave plea- 
sure to the readers of her own generation, and her 
name lives for the next generation of readers also in 
two sons who maintain its credit. Frances was the 
wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope, a barrister, to 
whom she was married at the age of nineteen, and by 
whom she was left widow at the age of thirty -five, 
with a family to support. Her son Thomas Adolphus 
was then fifteen years old and her son Anthony ten. 
She sent both sons to Winchester School, the elder 
also to Oxford, and the younger also to Harrow. In 
1829 she went to America, stayed three years, and 
published in 1832 her experience of the "Domestic 
Life of the Americans," to the great discontent of those 



1^2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

whose manners she described. Then followed light 
and cheerful records of Travel in Belgium and Western 
Germany and a book on "Paris and the Parisians," be- 
fore Mrs. Trollope began novel writing, in 1837, with 
"Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw," followed promptly by 
"the Vicar of Wrexhill." In 1838 Mrs. Trollope in 
"the Widow Barnaby" produced a picture of a vulgar 
woman on her travels, drawn with a rough good 
humour that pleased many readers. Following the 
lead of Charles Dickens, who, by his Oliver Twist, had, 
in 1838, quickened attention to the working of the 
Poor Laws, Mrs. Trollope published in 1839, i^"^ monthly 
parts, a novel upon life in the Factory, "Michael Arm- 
strong, the Factory Boy;" she also continued the ad- 
ventures of her Widow Barnaby in "the Widow 
Married," and published a book on "a Visit to Italy." 
Another novel, "Jessie Phillips" followed, and, in 1843, 
"the Barnabys in America." From this time until 1856 
Mrs. Trollope's novels appeared in rapid succession 
with an occasional light book founded on travel. Some- 
times, as in "the Robertses on their Travels" (1846) 
travel and fiction were united in one work. Her last 
novel, "Gertrude," appeared in the year 1855. In 
that year her son Anthony Trollope published his first 
novel, "the Warden," which obtained immediate and 
permanent reputation. In the following year Mrs. 
Trollope published her last book, "Paris and London," 
and her elder son, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, pub- 
lished his first book, "the Girlhood of Catherine de' 
Medici." Then the brave, hardworking mother, who 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I»3 

by her skill in furnishing wholesome entertainment to 
the public had secured all aids of liberal training for 
her children, and achieved her best success in their 
successes, put her pen aside. Its work was done. Mrs. 
TroUope spent her last years in Florence and died in 
October 1863. 

Mary Howitt and Anna Maria Hall had skill as 
writers of healthy stories for the young; so had Miss 
Martineau, although her energies went out over a wider 
field of labour. Mrs. Howitt and Mrs. S. C. Hall had 
also the happiness of long lives spent in fellowship 
of labour with their husbands. William 'and Mary 
Howitt made, as fa*- as possible, their labours one. 
They were both members of the Society of Friends, 
he born at Heanor in Derbyshire in 1795, she, as 
Mary Botham, at Uttoxeter in 1804. They married 
in 1823, and published in that year "The Forest 
Minstrel" with their names joined on the title-page. 
In 1827 they produced another joint-work, "The De- 
solation of Eyam and other Poems." It was after the 
accession of Victoria that Mary Howitt applied the 
sense of poetry that was stronger in her than in her 
husband, to the skilful invention of story books for the 
young, beginning with "Strive and Thrive" in 1839. 
The titles of the next tales will suggest their spirit: 
"Hope on Hope ever;" "Sowing and Reaping;" "Little 
Coin much Care." William Howitt had published in 
1833 a "History of Priestcraft," and in 1837 "the Rural 
Life of England." They went to live for a time at 
Heidelberg in 1841. The result was that William 



184 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Howitt published a book on "Student Life in Ger- 
many," with translations of German students' songs, 
and Mrs. Howitt, who improved the time by also 
learning Swedish, became a most graceful and pleasant 
translator into English of the novels of Fredrika Bremer. 
Husband and wife worked together on an account of 
Scandinavian Literature, and in 1862 a book describing 
"the Ruined Abbeys and Castles of England" was by 
them both. William Howitt laboured steadily as man 
of letters for the wellbeing of the people. In 1846 
he was connected with a "People's Journal." He 
turned to useful account in books two years experi- 
ence in Australia, whither he went in 1852 and whence 
he returned in 1854. He wrote an "Illustrated History 
of England" in six volumes, completed in 186 1. The 
eldest daughter of William and Mary Howitt, trained 
as an artist, is known also as author of a pleasant 
book published in 1853, "the Art-Student in Munich." 
William Howitt died in March 1879. 

Anna Maria Fielding, of Wexford, born in 1804, 
was married at the age of twenty to Samuel Carter 
Hall, a son of Colonel Robert Hall of Topsham, Devon. 
He was three years older than his wife, and was then 
already a man of letters. He reported for a news- 
paper; in the year after his marriage he edited an 
annual. It was he who succeeded Campbell in 1830 
as editor of "the New Monthly," and two years after 
the beginning of the reign of Victoria he founded, in 
1839, "the Art Journal," which not only diffused in- 
formation and criticism upon all matters that con- 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I 85 

cerned the advance of the Fine Arts as a means of 
culture, but by giving every month steel-plate engrav- 
ings from good pictures and statues, together with 
many woodcut illustrations, brought the arts them- 
selves into the home. Mrs. Hall began her career as 
a writer in 1828 with "Sketches of Irish Character." 
These were followed by novels, short tales, "Stories 
of the Irish Peasantry," which first appeared in 
"Chambers's Edinburgh Journal," and stories for chil- 
dren, besides books written in fellowship with her 
husband. Mr. and Mrs. Hall, who lived to celebrate 
their golden wedding-day, are said to have written 
three hundred and forty volumes. Whatever the 
number may be, health is in them all. And here 
also the finer grace of invention and expression is in 
the wife's share of the work. 

A third pair of workers who were active at the 
beginning of the reign, and who passed on to old age 
happy in their fellowship of work, were Charles and 
Mary Cowden Clarke. Mary Novello, eldest daughter 
of Vincent Novello, and sister to the famous singer 
Clara Novello, was born in 1809. She was married 
at the age of nineteen to Charles Cowden Clarke, who 
had known Keats as a boy in his father's school at 
Enfield. He shared her love for the poets, above all 
for Shakespeare. In 1845 Mrs. Cowden Clarke pub- 
lished "A Concordance to Shakespeare," which re- 
mained for many years without a rival, and has at 
last been rivalled only in Germany by the Shake- 
speare Lexicon of Dr. Alexander Schmidt. Mrs. Cowden 



r86 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Clarke joined her husband in producing an edition of 
the Works of Shakespeare. She has written also many- 
poems and tales. In March 1877, after some years 
of residence together at Genoa, she was parted 
from the companion of all her labour, who then 
died at the age of ninety. But still active, Mrs. 
Cowden Clarke, even in 1881 is dating from her home 
in Genoa a book of verses, "Honey from the Weed," 
a very human book whatever its technical faults, 
pathetic with memories, womanly and true. 

Among foremost representatives of English thought 
under Victoria we still have example of this happy 
union of the intellectual with the domestic life. The 11 
best English poetess of her own or any time became 
the wife of one of the best English poets, when Eliza- 
beth Barrett married Robert Browning. Miss Barrett 
was born in Herefordshire in 1809, the daughter of 
an English country gentleman whose kindly encourage- 
ment of her genius is recorded in her earliest verses. 
The impulse to write was strong in her youth, and at 
the age of seventeen she published, in 1826, "an 
Essay on Mind and other Poems." Her friend Miss 
Milford described her as "a slight delicate figure with 
a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most 
expressive face, large tender eyes, richly fringed by 
dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam." In 
1833 Miss Barrett published other poems together 
with a translation of the Prometheus Bound of ^schylus, 
which indicated the extent to which she had been 
refining her mind by Greek studies. In her as in 



IN THE RKIGN OF VICTORIA. 187 

Other \vriters of our day the effect of fresher life in litera- 
ture shows itself by happy change from a dead wor- 
ship of Vergil and Horace, that came in with the 
French critical influence, to a living sympathy with 
the genius of ancient Greece in all its forms. Poets 
who feel most deeply the spirit of their time find 
their way in through beauty of external form to the 
whole soul that was in the utterance of the Greek 
Poets, and of Plato who was poet too. Not seldom 
also from poets of less mark, who connect only a few 
surface emotions with expression of the outward sense 
of beauty, English comes with a touch refined by 
contact with the Greeks. Miss Barrett felt the whole 
charm of the imaginative literature of the Greeks, 
and read also the works of the Greek fathers of the 
Church. At the beginning of the reign of Victoria, 
there were serious signs of consumption, for which 
she was sent to Torquay. A year or two later, a 
brother was drowned by the upsetting of a boat within 
her sight, close to the shore. She was removed by 
easy stages to London, where she still studied as- 
siduously and recovered health. In 1840 Miss Barrett 
published "the Seraphim and other Poems," and in 1844 
there was a collected edition of her Poems in five 
volumes. Robert Browning had then been publishing 
plays and lyrics in occasional cheap shilling parts 
under the general title of "Bells and Pomegranates." 
A little piece by Miss Barrett in which she expressed 
her admiration of Mr. Browning's poetry by comparing 
it to the Pomegranate fruit, began a friendship that 



1 88 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

led, in 1846, to marriage. It is, therefore, as Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning that Miss Barrett lives in English 
Literature. 

Caroline Elizabeth Norton, whose maiden name 
was Sheridan, was granddaughter of Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan, the author of the School for Scandal *. She 
was born in 1808. Her marriage at the age of 
twenty with the Hon. George C. Norton, brother of 
Lord Grantley, was not happy, and was followed after 
sometime by a separation. With quick wit as a family 
birthright, and warm feeling, she wrote in annuals 
and published poems; produced in 1829 "the Sorrows 
of Rosalie;" in 1830 "the Undying One" on the sub- 
ject of the Wandering Jew; in 1845 "the Child of the 
Islands." She showed interest in several forms of 
political and social reform. Her novels were "Stuart 
of Dunleath" in 1851, "Lost and Saved" in 1863, 
and "Old Sir Douglas" in 1868*"^. Her best poem 
was "the Lady of La Garaye" published in 1862. 

Harriett Martineau, the sixth of eight children, was 
born at Norwich in June 1802. She was an elder 
sister of James Martineau, who was born in April 1805, 
and who has taken an important place among leaders 
of thought under Victoria. The founder of the family 
in England was driven from France by the Revoca- 
tion of the Edict of Nantes, and became a surgeon at 
Norwich. From him the practice of medicine was 

* Sheridan's Dramatic Works are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 
** Mrs. Norton's three novels are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 89 

handed down as a family profession to Miss Mar- 
tineau's uncle, who was eminent as a provincial surgeon. 
Miss Martineau's bent for literature showed itself 
early. Before she was twenty, she published a book 
of "Devotional Exercises for the Young," and soon 
became well known as a writer of tales. In 1832 
she began to aid great social movements of the time 
by endeavours to show political principles in action 
through a series of short stories. Her "Illustrations 
of Political Economy" written upon this plan, extended 
through eighteen small and cheap volumes. In 1833 
she illustrated in like manner "Poor Laws and Paupers," 
and in 1834 "Illustration of Taxation" followed. 



I go OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF THOSE BY WHOM CHEAP LITERATURE WAS MADE USEFUL; 
AND OF THE EARLIER LIFE OF THOMAS BABINGTON; 
MACAULAY. 

Deferring Avhat has to be said of Miss Martineau's 
work in the reign of Victoria, we turn now to some 
who were fellow-workers with her in her efforts to 
spread knowledge among the people. Such efforts;! 
acquired fresh energy at the time when there was, ,] 
by the Reform Bill, an extension of the rights of^ 
citizenship. 

Charles Knight was born at Windsor in 1791. 
His mother died before he was two years old. His 
father, also a Charles Knight, was a bookseller and 
printer. He had published for the Eton boys in 
1786-7 an Eton magazine, "the Microcosm" to which 
George Canning and others were contributors. 

As a boy Charles Knight read much; at twelve 
he was sent for two years to a school at Ealing; and 
at fourteen he was bound apprentice to his father. 
For the next three years he was at his case, learning 
to print. His father sold second hand books, and 
young Charles Knight, when he was not printing, 
made catalogues. He was about seventeen when he 
made a catalogue of the books of a clergyman who 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. IQI 

was selling his library before going to India. Among 
the books was a very defective copy of the first folio 
of Shakespeare, and young Charles Knight's employer 
had in those days no reason to be conscious of extra- 
vagant generosity when he said of his first folio 
"Young man, I give you that imperfect copy of 
Shakespeare for yourself" From this gift Charles 
Knight dated his enthusiasm for Shakespeare. He 
supplied the missing pages of the volume, by earing 
fly leaves out of the seventeenth century folios in 
his father's shop and printing on them with old type 
that happened to be in his father's printing office 
and was exactly like the type of the 1623 folio of 
Shakespeare. This kind of work was his first training 
to close observation of the differences between earlier 
and later texts. In 1808 John and Leigh Hunt had 
set up "the Examiner" newspaper, which blended 
good literature in itself and the appreciation of it in 
others with a keen interest in political and social 
progress. Charles Knight was among the first ad- 
mirers of "the Examiner." In 18 12 he had for two 
months a little half amateur experience as a reporter 
in London. This was designed as preparation for a 
venture to which he had persuaded his father. They 
were to produce out of their Windsor printing office 
an "Eton and Windsor Express," of which No. i. 
appeared on the ist of August 18 12. Charles Knight's 
account of this enterprise illustrates the difficulty of 
producing a provincial newspaper, when it was bur- 
dened with a fourpenny stamp duty upon every copy, 



192 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

a duty of three shillings, raised afterwards to three: 
and sixpence, upon every advertisement, and wheni 
the duty upon the paper used for printing was three- 
pence a pound. The price of a newspaper was them 
usually sevenpence, and there were not more than a 
hundred country newspapers in all England. They 
could not easily get copies of the London papers in 
time for the prompt reproduction of important news. 
The chief London daily journals had expresses to > 
bring news from the outports. One or two, especially 
"the Times," had private packet boats to meet home- 
ward bound ships, and speed home before them with 
the news they brought. But foreign news that came 
after midnight, or a late sitting of Parliament, would 
sometimes make it impossible to get a London paper 
out till noon. The largest number of copies then 
printed by a London daily paper did not exceed four 
thousand. "The Times" first appeared on the 13th of 
January 1785, as "the Daily Universal Register." On 
the I St of January 1788 its name was changed to 
"the Times." In 18 14 it made the first attempt at 
printing by machinery. The compositors who had 
dreaded what was coming, and were preparing to 
protect what they supposed to be their interests, were 
waiting for foreign news when they were told by 
the manager, John Walter, son of the John Walter 
by whom the paper had been founded, that the morn- 
ing's paper had been printed already by steam. The 
men were warned that if they attempted violence, 
there was force at hand to repress it; if they were quiet. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I93 

those men who were no longer wanted would have 
their wages paid until they found other employment. 
It hardly needs to be said that one result of this 
development of the printing press has been to open 
new fields of employment and enlarge the old fields, 
adding greatly to the earning power of the people. 
The stamp duty on newspapers was 2}4d. in 1S14., and 
the advertisement duty 3^. In 181 5 the stamp duty 
was raised to 4^., and the advertisement duty to 
3 J. 6d. At that time the whole number of newspapers 
published in the United Kingdom, was only 254. 
The stamp duty remained at fourpence until 1836, 
when it was reduced to a penny, and remained a 
penny till its abolition in June 1855. The duty upon 
each advertisement remained ^s. 6d. until 1833 when 
it was reduced to is. 6d. in England and u in 
Ireland. It was wholly abolished in 1853. 

We return now to Charles Knight, busy upon his 
"Windsor and Eton Express." He printed a play 
called "Arminius," in 1813, and published in i8i6 a 
masque "the Bridal of the Isles" upon the marriage 
of the Princess Charlotte. In 1 8 1 7 he shewed his in- 
terest in Literature by printing at Windsor Fairfax's 
version of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," preceded by 
short biographies of Tasso and Fairfax. In 1820 he 
began to publish a monthly serial called "the Plain 
Englishman," with the direct purpose of opposing 
cheap and wholesome literature to the cheap and un- 
wholesome, which was easier to find. He and a friend 

OJ English Literature. 1 3 



194 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

edited the Plain Englishman for three years, and wheri 
it came to an end, in December 1822, Charles Knigh 
was in London editing a paper called "the Guardian.' 
In 1823, having sold the Guardian, he attained ont 
object of ambition and became a London Publisherlj 
His shop was in Pall Mall East, then a quarter being! 
built upon, in the neighbourhood of the Royal Mew? 
which once occupied the site of what is now Trafalgar 
Square. He had published in 1820 — 21 at Windsor 
"the Etonian" for Winthrop Mackworth Praed, and 
other Eton boys who followed in the steps of J. Smith,i 
Frere and Canning. In 1823 Praed was at Cambridge, 
and suggested to his old Windsor publisher, fresh in 
his dignity as head of a London house, that he should 
produce for the larger public a Magazine written by^ 
himself and other young Cambridge men. The sugges- 
tion was adopted. The chief writers were Praed, who 
signed himself either Peregrine Courtney or Vyvyan: 
Joyeuse; Thomas Babington Macaulay, who styled him- 
self Tristram Merton; John Moultrie, who signed as^ 
Gerard Montgomery; Derwent Coleridge; Henry Nelson 
Coleridge; William Sidney Walker; and Henry Maiden. 
A magazine that brought such men as these together 
in their youth belongs to literary history. It was called 
"Knight's Quarterly Magazine," the first number ap- 
peared in June 1823 and John Wilson, — Christopher 
North— described it in his "Noctes Ambrosianae" as a 
"gentlemanly Miscellany, got together by a clan of 
young scholars, who look upon the world with a cheer- 
ful eye, and all its on-goings with a spirit of hopeful 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 95 

kindness." We shall find no pleasanter occasion for 
a glance at the chief members of the clan. 

Praed himself, William Mackworth Praed, was the 
youngest son of a serjant-at-law, who had a country 
seat at Teignmouth. He was born in London in 
1802, lost his mother early, and after education at a 
private school followed his eldest brother to Eton in 
18 14. It was just before passing from Eton to Cam- 
bridge that Praed and his friend Walter Blunt edited 
"the Etonian," its monthly numbers beginning with 
October 1820 and ending with July 182 1. Praed 
commenced residence at Trinity College in October 
182 1. He obtained medals for Greek Odes and Epi- 
grams and one for English verse; was private tutor to 
a nobleman's son at Eton from 1825 to 1827 when he 
obtained a Fellowship at Trinity, then joined an Inn 
of Court, and was called to the bar in 1829. In 1830 
he felt deeply the death of an elder sister. He was 
in Parliament from November 1830 until after the 
passing of the Reform Bill, and again in 1834, when 
he held office as Secretary to the Board of Control 
under Sir Robert Peel. In 1835 his father died and 
in the same year he married. At the beginning of 
the reign of Victoria he was failing rapidly in health 
and in July 1839 ^^ ^^^^ of consumption. In 1864 ^^^ 
collected poems were published in two volumes and 
with a Memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. The 
grace of his light playfulness as a writer of vers de 
sociite is sustained in these volumes by an undertone 
of deep and pure domestic feeling. 

13* 



^9^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

John Moultrie was born on the last day of the yean 

1799. His grandfather had been the loyal Governor of; 
Florida in the American War of Independence. Hisj 
father was a rector in Shropshire who sent him to Eton 
and Trinity College Cambridge. At school and College 
he was comrade with Praed. In 1825 he took orders, wasi 
presented to the rectory of Rugby, and married the sister 1 
of a man, James Fergusson, who produced in 1865-67; 
the most important History of Architecture in ouri 
language. John Moultrie remained at Rugby to the; 
end of his life. His mother formed part of his house- 
hold until 1867, when she died at the age of ninety, 
three. His wife had died three years before. Hei 
himself died at the age of 75 on the day after Christ-; 
mas day in 1874. 

William Sidney Walker born at Pembroke in 1795, 
published part of a poem on "Gustavus Vasa" in 1813] 
before he had left Eton. He obtained a Fellowship ofl 
Trinity, and when the date of that had expired his lifej 
was troubled, until his death at the age of 51 on the^ 
15th of October 1846. In 1852 his Poetical Remains -i 
were edited with a Memoir by his friend Moultrie. In 
1854 a little book by him upon Shakespeare's Versifica- 
tion was published, and in i860 appeared three volumes; 
of notes by him upon the Text of Shakespeare. 

Derwent and Henry Nelson Coleridge, also among 
the contributors to "Knight's Quarterly Magazine," 
were son and nephew of the poet. Derwent, born inj 

1800, was at St. John's College Cambridge when 
Praed was at Trinity. He entered the Church, was 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 1 97 

Principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea, from 1841 to 
1864, and was afterwards rector of Hauwell and Pre- 
bendary of St. Paul's. He edited the Poetical Remains 
of his elder brother Hartley in 1851. He also wTOte 
the Memoir of Praed prefixed to the collection of his 
works. 

The father of Thomas Babington Macaulay was 
Zachary, one of twelve children of the Rev. John 
Macaulay, who was during the last fifteen years of 
his life minister at Cardross. Mr. Thomas Babington, 
owner of Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, married 
Jean Macaulay, another of the twelve. Zachary 
Macaulay was in his earlier life overseer of an estate 
in Jamaica, where he saw what was meant by negro 
slavery. At twenty four he gave up his position, 
and was sent to Sierra Leone by the Company 
formed, with Wilberforce a member of the Council, to 
oppose to slave labour the work done by a colony of 
liberated slaves. Zachary Macaulay, established at 
Freetown, became Governor for the Company, and 
worked against all difficulties with a firmness and 
patience founded upon deep religious faith. An attack 
of fever caused him to return to England, where he 
became engaged to a Bristol quakeress, Selina Mills, 
who had been a pupil and remained a closely at- 
tached friend of Hannah More and her sisters. But 
he returned to Sierra Leone, and did not marry until 
he was again in England and settled at home with a 
salary of five hundred a year as Secretary to the Com- 
pany. Married in August 1799, Mr. and Mrs. Zachary 



1 9© OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Macaulay took a small house in Lambeth; but when] 
a child was to be born, Zachary Macaulay's sisteri 
Jean, Mrs. Thomas Babington, invited her sister-in-law 
to Rothley Temple. So it happened that the child 
was born at Rothley Temple, on the 25th of October,! 
1800, and was named Thomas Babington Macaulay. 
Home was for the first two years of the child's life ini 
a house in Birchin Lane, used for the offices of the 
Sierra Leone Company. For the rest of the time ofi 
his childhood, Macaulay's home was at a house in 
High Street Clapham. When he was three years old, 
books became his companions. He had a marvellous 
memory and soon began to talk like print. When he: 
was four years old, the hostess condoled with him at J 
a house where hot coffee had been spilt over his legs, ,; 
and he replied "Thank you, madam, the agony is 
abated." At seven years old he took it into his head 
to fill a quire of paper with a Compendium of Uni- 
versal History. Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel" he 
knew by heart. He had picked it up in a house at 
which his father made a long call, read eagerly, and 
when he went home sat down on his mother's bed 
and repeated as many cantos as she liked to hear. 
He knew also nearly the whole of "Marmion," when 
he began at eight years old to imitate Scott's verse 
with a poem on the Battle of Cheviot. When he had 
written three or four hundred lines of that, his fancy 
changed and he began a heroic poem "Olaus the 
Great, or the Conquest of Mona." At seven years old 
he was left for a week with Hannah More and her 



IN. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. I99 

sisters at Barley Wood, where, as Macaulay afterwards 
said, "They could not make enough of me. They 
taught me to cook; and I was to preach, and they 
got people in from the fields, and I stood on a chair, 
and preached sermons. I might have been indicted 
for holding a conventicle." The fluency of talk, and 
fluency in the outpourings of verse and prose cleverly 
imitative of the books over which it was his delight 
to hang, belonged to a frank self-confident nature, 
that was at the same time good-humoured and play- 
ful. Zachary Macaulay joined a nephew in establish- 
ing the firm of Macaulay and Babington, which had 
a large business as African merchants. When the 
eldest son was thirteen, there was a family of nine 
children, four boys and five girls, in a thriving house- 
hold. From a Clapham school, Macaulay was sent to 
Little Shelford near Cambridge, where he was placed, 
at the age of twelve, as one of a dozen boys under 
an Evangelical clergyman in whom his father trusted. 
Among his school fellows next year was Henry Maiden. 
His tutor had then removed to another house in Hert- 
fordshire. The lifelong friendship between Macaulay 
and Maiden who were competitors at School and 
College, was due, as friendship often is, to likeness 
in essentials with much outward difference. Henry 
Maiden became one of the finest scholars of his time, 
and as Professor of Greek at University College London 
from 1 83 1 until 1876, only a year before his death, 
he exercised great influence over two generations of 
students. He was among the young writers of "Knight's 



200 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Quarterly Magazine," but in after years his fastidious] 
taste restrained his pen. Macaulay even among school! 
boys was loud and confident as a talker, and whem 
afterwards he wrote books had as good an opinion of] 
them as the kindest of his critics. A memory to which 
everything seemed to stick enabled him to pour out 
of his mind at will whatever had once come into it, 
and he took natural pleasure in the exercise of power. 
But it was natural pleasure. A quick wit went with the 
quick memory, and Macaulay was in all things so j! 
frank and kindly, that his self-confidence offended | 
none. Henry Maiden's quiet nature felt, no doubt, | 
the charm of Macaulay's boldness, though in him that 
sense of an unattainable perfection which is keen in 
minds of finest temper was a restraining influence 
through life. He published nothing but a Lecture on 
*Hhe Origin of Universities" in 1835. 

Macaulay's memory was such a gift as few would 
welcome. At thirteen he read two pieces of poor verse 
in a Cambridge newspaper while waiting at an inn, 
and forty years afterwards he could repeat them word 
for word. In October 18 18 he went to Trinity College 
Cambridge, sharing rooms with the eldest son of his 
father's friend and fellow-worker Henry Thornton, 
member for Lambeth. At Cambridge he twice gained 
the Chancellor's medal for English verse. In 1821 he 
obtained a Craven University Scholarship with Maiden 
and George Long. In 1822 his neglect of Mathematics 
deprived the brilliant student of a place in the 
Tripos, but he succeeded in a competition for a prize 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 201 

of ten pounds annually offered to the Junior Bachelor 
of Trinity College who shall write the best Essay on 
the Conduct and Character of William the Third. This 
brings us to the time when, in 1823, Macaulay, twenty 
three years old, was among the contributors to Knight's 
Quarterly Magazine. In the following year, 1824, he 
and his friend Maiden both obtained Fellowships at 
Trinity. When Macaulay went to College, his father 
had made a fortune in the African trade; before he 
left College, his father had lost his fortune. But the 
eldest son brought cheer into the new home in Great 
Ormond Street. He talked politics at breakfast to 
the delight of his father, and with his brothers 
and sisters of an evening was full of loving playful- 
ness. 

To the first number of "Knight's Quarterly" 
Macaulay contributed his Fragments of a Roman Tale, 
also a satire upon the scheme of patronage embodied 
in the Royal Society of Literature and, to please his 
father, an article on West Indian Slavery. But his 
father was shocked by a couple of amatory poems in 
the number. He did not know that it was his son 
himself who had written of the happiness of seeing a 
Rosamond twine rose and eglantine round the bower 
he was to share with her, 

Still laying on my soul and sense a new and mystic charm 
At every turn of thy fairy shape and of thy snowy arm; 

but he would not allow Thomas to write again in 
a Magazine that would admit such naughtiness. The 



202 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

second number contained nothing alarming, and 
Macaulay had leave to resume his place as a con- 
tributor. He sent to the Magazine "Montcontour," 
"Ivry," "Songs of the Huguenots," "Songs of the Civil 
War," "Scenes from Athenian Revels," an essay on 
"the Athenian Orators," and a "Conversation between 
Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton touching 
the great Civil War." The two last named pieces 
were in the fifth number, published in July 1824. 
In October, after the sixth number had appeared, 
Charles Knight went to Cambridge to compose dif- 
ferences arising out of his claim to control writers 
in the Magazine. He found a happy dinner in 
Henry Maiden's rooms to celebrate the gaining of 
a Trinity Fellowship by Maiden and Macaulay, 
but the dispute proved fatal to Knight's Quarterly. 
Macaulay had work for another Quarterly in pro- 
spect. 

Francis Jeffrey was looking for young men who 
could bring new life into the "Edinburgh Review." 
In January 1825 he wrote to a London friend, "Can 
you not lay your hands on some clever young man 
who would write for us? The original supporters of 
the work are getting old, and either too busy or too 
stupid, and here the young men are mostly Tories." 
Macaulay went to Cambridge a Tory; he was almost 
turned into a Radical by the influence of one of his 
Cambridge friends, Charles Austin; and he left the 
University a zealous Whig. The search for a "clever 
young man" who could revive the youth of "the 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 203 

Edinburgh Review" had caused suggestions to be made 
to him when he was writing in "Knight's Quarterly," 
and when that journal disappeared Macaulay was doing 
his best to write a first article with which Francis 
Jeffrey should be pleased. That was his article on 
"Milton," which came out in August 1824. Jeffrey 
had written to him, in acknowledging the MS., "The 
more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked 
up that style." The article on Milton at once gave 
reputation to its writer. Macaulay was entering to the 
bar, was, in fact, called in 1826, and joined the 
Northern Circuit; but his essay on Milton pointed to 
another call. The "Edinburgh Review" drew from 
him article after article, and the attention drawn to 
young Macaulay by his writing in "the Edinburgh" 
caused Lord Lyndhurst to make him in 1828 a Com- 
missioner of Bankruptcy. With about ^300 a year 
from his fellowship, and ^^2 00 from his writing for "the 
Edinburgh," this office made Macaulay's income about 
^^goo a year when he was twenty-eight years old. He 
felt — and he was — able to succeed either in Literature 
or in Politics. At that time of his life his ambition 
was towards a political career, and Lord Lansdowne 
early in 1830 put him into parliament as member for 
what was then his Lordship's pocket borough of 
Calne. The parliament Macaulay joined was that by 
which the Reform Bill was to be passed, and the 
success of his first speech on behalf of it strengthened 
his faith that he might abandon law for politics. He 
voted for reforms in the Bankruptcy Court which swept 



204 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

away his Own small office of Commissioner, and left 
him with only his earnings from the Review and the 
income from his fellowship, which then had but a few 
months to run. In the autumn of 1830 a sister died, 
and in the spring of 1831 his mother. His home 
feeling was expressed in the close of a home letter: 
"Love to all, — to all who are left me to love. We 
must love each other better." On one day in January 
1832 a sister records "Yesterday Tom dined with us, 
and stayed late. He talked almost uninterruptedly 
for six hours." On a day in the following February 
he was with his sisters "in high boyish spirits." Lord 
Lansdowne had been asking him about his disposition 
towards taking office. In the "Edinburgh Review" he 
felt with impatience the superior influence of Brougham, 
then the most popular man in England. He felt that 
Brougham disliked and avoided him. Macaulay, there- 
fore, disliked Brougham. 

After the passing of the Reform Bill, Macaulay was 
appointed Secretary of the Board of Control which re- 
presented the voice of the Crown in the affairs of the 
East India Company. In January 1833 he entered the 
new parliament as member for Leeds. In December 
he was appointed to the seat on the Supreme Council 
of India which was appointed to be held by one who 
was not a servant of the Company. The salary was 
ten thousand a year. Half of this he could save, and 
after a few years of absence he might hope to return 
with the independence necessary to political success. 
The immediate prospect of political success at home 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 205 

was gloomy, and it was impossible for him to earn a 
living by his pen while he took active part in politics. 
His wellbeing was also the wellbeing of his father 
and sisters. In February 1834, with his sister named 
after Hannah More as his companion, Macaulay sailed 
for India. There Hannah was engaged by the end of 
the year to marry Mr. Charles Edward Trevelyan an 
energetic reformer whom Lord William Bentinck had 
made Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs. Macaulay 
said of him "He has no small talk. His mind is full 
of schemes of moral and political improvement, and 
his zeal boils over in his talk. His topics, even in 
courtship, are steam navigation, the education of the 
natives, the equalization of the sugar duties, the sub- 
stitution of the Roman for the Arabic alphabet in the 
oriental languages." 

Charles Edward Trevelyan, son of an Archdeacon 
of Taunton, was born in 1807 and educated at the 
Charterhouse and Haileybury. In 1848 he was made 
knight commander of the Bath because of his exertions 
for relief of Ireland under famine. After zealous service 
in posts of high trust that contributed much to the well- 
being of India, he was created a baronet in 1874. The 
son of Sir Charles Trevelyan, George Otto Trevelyan, 
born in 1838, like his father active for reform and now 
M.P. for Hawick, is the nephew of Macaulay to whom 
we are indebted for a life of his uncle first published 
in 1876. 

After the marriage of his sister Hannah More with 
Mr. Trevelyan, news from home of the death of another 



2o6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

sister filled Macaulay with a grief that caused him to 
work with fresh intensity. He became in March 1835 
President of the Committee of Public Instruction, and 
then President of a Law Commission to which he pro- 
posed the framing of a Criminal Code for the whole 
Indian Empire. In this work he took the chief labour, 
while his work in behalf of education and of the re- 
form of Indian Criminal Law was voluntary and unpaid. 
He might have lived an easy half idle official life; but 
he bent all his energies to useful labour, encouraged 
doubtless by the brother-in-law who had' been added 
to his Indian household, since the sister who went out 
to be his companion could not leave him to live alone. 
Still also there was the large habit of reading. He 
read through, in one year in India, Sophocles twice, 
^schylus twice, Euripides once, almost all Plato, all 
Herodotus and Thucydides, almost all Xenophon, much 
Aristotle, Plautus twice, Terence twice, Lucretius twice, 
almost all Cicero, and many authors more; the pencil 
marks in the books implying that he read with care. 
He was also sending articles home to Macvey Napier 
for "the Edinburgh," among them the article on Bacon, 
in 1837, which filled 104 pages of the Review. That 
was Macaulay's position, thirty seven years old, and 
still in India, when the reign of Victoria began. 

We may return now to the publisher of the 
Quarterly Magazine in which Macaulay began his 
career as a writer. In 1825 Charles Knight published 
Milton's Latin Treatise on Christian Doctrine which 
had been discovered behind a press in the State Paper 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 207 

Office, and was edited by the Librarian and Historio- 
grapher to George IV., the Rev. Charles Richard Sumner. 
He visited Paris in autumn, came home and planned 
a "National Library." At this time Archibald Constable, 
who had published the first number of "the Edinburgh 
Review," was at the close of his career, and was lead- 
ing the way in the production of new and good litera- 
ture at a cheap price, with his series known as "Con- 
stable's Miscellany." In 1826 ruin came upon many 
publishing houses. House after house fell, the fall of 
one involving fall of others. Constable and Ballantyne 
were among the ruined, and their fall involved the 
complete ruin of Sir Walter Scott who was a sleeping 
partner with the Ballantynes. Scott, involved in 
£ 130,000 of debt, refused to be cleared by bank- 
ruptcy and killed himself in the grand struggle to 
pay all. He did pay all; for what was left unpaid at 
his death, in 1832, was cleared by the profits of the 
author's edition of his works in 48 volumes, with new 
prefaces and notes, which he devised and prepared. 
Charles Knight's publishing house could not stand the 
strain. 

But in the autumn of that year 1826 Henry 
Brougham, not yet Lord Brougham, was organizing the 
"Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." 
Charles Knight's plan of a National Library was brought 
to his notice by Matthew Davenport Hill. The young 
publisher was then living at Brompton, with a wife 
and four little girls; his stock in trade had been sold 
off by private arrangement. He was thirty-six yearg 



208 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE . 

old, and had the world to begin again. He tried a 
little journalism under James Silk Buckingham. 

James Silk Buckingham from sailor had turned 
journalist in India, where he gave so much offence to 
the East India Company that he was ordered to quit 
Calcutta. He came to England with a good grievance, 
was a fluent speaker, lectured all over England against 
the Constitution of the East India Company, and in 
so doing helped to prepare the way for abolition of its 
charter. He established in 1824 a journal, called "the 
Oriental Herald" and from 1832 to 1837 represented 
Sheffield in Parliament. He afterwards visited America, 
published travels, obtained a pension from the East 
India Company, published his Autobiography and died 
in 1855. A son of his, Leicester Stanhope Bucking- 
ham, who died in middle life, became a minor 
dramatist in London. 

A little was enough of journalism under James Silk 
Buckingham. Charles Knight also edited a "Friend- 
ship's Offering" for 1827. This was one of a class of 
"Annuals" which had been introduced into English 
Literature in 1822 by an enterprising German, Rudolf 
Ackermann, who had begun life as a carriage draughts- 
man, and then settled in London as a printseller and 
publisher of ornamental books. His "Forget-me-not" 
in 1822 was published as the first of a series of 
elegant giftbooks for Christmas or New Year, con- 
taining short tales and poems by popular or fashion- 
able writers, illustrated by pictures from good artists 
engraved on copper-plates. The idea was immediately 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 20g 

caught up by others. Alaric Watts followed with a 
"Literary Souvenir." Samuel Carter Hall started "the 
Amulet." Frederic Mansel Reynolds edited "the Keep- 
sake." And so the fashion spread, till it included 
"Bijous," "Gems," "New Year's Gifts," "Juvenile Forget- 
me-nots," Juvenile Keepsakes," etc. etc. The best of 
these giftbooks were produced with great care and at 
great cost. The Preface to "the Keepsake" for 1829 
says that eleven thousand guineas had been spent 
upon its various departments. It contained pieces by 
Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Moore, L. E. L., 
Lockhart, Theodore Hook, Mrs. Shelley, fragments of 
Shelley's wTiting, also contributions from Henry Luttrell 
and other fashionable writers, and steel or copper- 
plate engravings from pictures by Sir Thomas Law- 
rence, Turner, Landseer, Westall, Stothard, and half a 
dozen more. These Annuals lived into the reign of 
Victoria, but they were gradually superseded by 
luxurious editions of standard works, and giftbooks of 
many kinds, which were lavishly illustrated when a 
great advance in the art of wood engraving caused 
woodcuts to take the place of the steel-plates. 

Charles Knight having edited a "Friendship's 
Offering" in 1827 found in July of that year work to 
his mind. He was then entrusted with the super- 
intendence of the publications of the Society for the 
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Its first treatises, 
which appeared as sixpenny numbers published once 
a fortnight had been introduced by Brougham with 
"a Discourse on the Objects, Advantages and Pleasure^ 

0/ English Literature. 1 4 



210 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of Science." In 1828 Charles Knight suggested that 
a rational Almanac might be produced, to supersede 
the prophetic and other almanacs that were still trading 
on the ignorance of the people. The suggestion was 
not made until the middle of November. Brougham 
fastened upon the suggestion with characteristic energy. 
The work was at once begun, and the first number of 
"The British Almanac" was published before the 
I St of January 1829. Although its price was half a 
crown, ten thousand were sold in a week. It was 
followed, within a few weeks, by "the Companion to 
the Almanac," a compact body of information that 
was to set forth — and still sets forth — from year to 
year the progress of the country. In 1828 Charles 
Knight was travelling to organize Local Committees of 
the Society for which he worked. He was planning 
also a "Library of Entertaining Knowledge." By 
July 1829 he had established himself again as a 
publisher in Pall Mall East, and started his "Library 
of Entertaining Knowledge" at the same time that 
John Murray, pliant to the new demand for cheap 
literature that should give real aid to the progress of 
thought, began the issue of his "Family Library." It 
was as a part of the large movement at this time 
towards a higher education that the London University 
was opened in 1828. Among its first professors were 
George Long, Thomas Hewitt Key and Augustus De 
Morgan, who all gave active assistance to the work of 
the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." 
John William Lubbock, the banker, father of Sir John 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 2 I I 

Lubbock, who is now eminent among men of science, 
was skilled in Astronomy and contributed to the 
Royal Society valuable papers on the Tides; he it was 
who superintended the astronomical part of the British 
Almanac. Charles Knight, who was throughout life 
writer as well as publisher, contributed a book on 
Menageries to his "Library of Entertaining Knowledge," 
which appeared in monthly half- volumes, and Mr. 
George Lillie Craik first won public attention by con- 
tributing to the same series a book entitled "the Pur- 
suit of Knowledge under Difficulties." 

George Lillie Craik was born in Fife in 1799 and 
was educated at St. Andrews for the Scottish Church. 
But the bent of his mind was towards Literature, and at 
the age of twenty-five he came to London as a writer. 
His "Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties" was a 
suggestive book, helpful to many by showing through 
many examples, clearly and genially set forth, how the 
mind of man, bent upon worthy work, has strength to 
make its way along the worst and steepest road of 
life. They fail who will not venture boldly even upon 
a clear way for dread of an imagined lion round the 
corner. In the spirit of George Lillie Craik another 
Scotchman, Samuel Smiles, born at Haddington in 
18 16, trained first to medicine, and employed after- 
w^ards, till his retirement in 1866, in the service of 
the South-Eastern Railway, has written in our later day 
many a good book. His "Life of George Stephenson," 
in 1856, "Lives of the Engineers," in 1862, "Self-Help," 
in 1862, "Industrial Biography," in 1863, "Lives of 

14* 



212 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Boulton and Watt," in 1865, "Life of Robert Dick, 
Baker, Geologist and Botanist," in 1878, and other 
books, seek, like the writings of G. L. Craik, to push 
forward the great battle of civilization, and aid in the 
work of citizen-building. Mr. Smiles received from 
the University of Edinburgh the honorary degree oft 
L. L. D. in 1878, an honour formerly conferred upon 
George Lillie Craik, who was appointed also in 18491 
Professor of History and English Literature in Queen's 
College, Belfast. He had produced in 1844-5 ^^^ 
Charles Knight's cheap volumes "Sketches of the 
History of Literature and Learning in England," which 
was the first attempt to make widely known among; 
the English people the history of their own intellectual \ 
life. This was expanded in 1861 into a valuable^ 
"History of English Literature and of the English 1 
Language," of which an abridged edition has been 
and is widely useful as an aid to education of the: 
young. "^ 

In 1 83 1 Charles Knight established a "Quarterly 
Journal of Education," edited by George Long, which 1 
was continued until 1836. In 1832, the year of the; 
Reform Bill, there appeared on the 3 1 st of March the 
first number of "the Penny Magazine." Charles Knight, 
then living at Hampstead, was walking into town one 
morning with Matthew Davenport Hill, and they were 
regretting the large number of unwholesome penny 



* G. L. Cralk's Manual of English Literature and Language is ; 
in two volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. s 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 213 

journals that degraded the minds of their readers. 
"Let us," said Mr. Hill, "see what something cheap 
and good shall accomplish. Let us have a penny 
magazine." "And what shall we call it?" asked Charles 
Knight. "Call it the Penny Magazine." In the middle 
of March the suggestion was made to Brougham who 
was then Lord Chancellor. At once a Committee was 
called. The very notion of a weekly sheet at a penny 
seemed to some as a touching of pitch. "It is very 
awkward," said one member of Committee. But all 
difficulty was overcome, and the first number of the 
new magazine was out by the end of the month. 
Charles Knight was publisher, and took the risks of 
publication. At the end of the year "the Penny Ma- 
gazine" had a sale of 200,000 copies. 

It is a noticeable illustration of the movement of 
great currents of thought that the conditions of the 
time in 1832 which caused Charles Knight to set up 
"the Penny Magazine" in London had only a few 
weeks before in Edinburgh caused the brothers Wil- 
liam and Robert Chambers to produce "Chambers's 
Edinburgh Journal," its price being not the penny 
with an ill name, but three halfpence. The Penny Ma- 
gazine was the more popular for its use of woodcut 
illustrations; such pictures as it gave from large wood- 
blocks occupying a whole page, were then a new fea- 
ture in book illustration, for a great development of 
the use of wood-engraving dates from this time. The 
success of the Magazine caused Charles Knight to 
begin "the Penny Cyclopaedia," in which men spe- 



214 ^^ ENGLISH LITERATURE 

dally qualified were to take the subscribers through 
the whole domain of knowledge, in a series of weekly 
penny numbers forming about eight volumes. The first 
number appeared on the 2nd of January 1833. As 
the work proceeded, its limits were so much enlarged 
that at the rate of issue first designed, it would have 
taken thirty-seven years to finish. The rate of issue, 
therefore, was doubled in the second year, and the 
price became two pence a week. After three years 
the quantity issued was doubled again, and the sub- 
scription became four pence a week. In the year of 
Her Majesty's accession "the Penny Cyclopaedia" was 1 
still in progress, and it was not finished until 1844. 
In the first year its sale was 75,000. It fell at once 
to 55,000, when two numbers a week were issued, and 
sank 'to 44,000. After the rate of issue had been in- 1 
creased to four numbers a week, the sale steadily 
declined to 20,000 at the close of 1843. The ven- 
ture was at the publisher's risk, and involved him m 
a final loss of ^30,000. In 1850, when there was 
question of the abolition of the paper duty, Charles j 
Knight contributed to the discussion an account of; 
"The Struggles of a Book against excessive Taxation," \ 
in which he showed that he had paid to the Excise 
.^16,500 for paper duty on "the Penny Cyclopaedia" 
alone, and that the further effect of the tax upon the 
price of paper, and other considerations, justified him: 
in estimating that the whole £ 30,000 lost to him by 
that venture in aid of higher education would have, 
been saved if there had been no Tax on Knowledge. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 21$ 

Charles Knight was more successful with a hand- 
some "Pictorial Bible" suggested to him by the 
German Bilder-Bibel for the poor. This he began to 
issue in parts at the beginning of 1836, and com- 
pleted in two years and a half. Improvements in the 
art of wood-engraving enabled him to reproduce 
scriptural designs of the great painters, scenery of the 
Holy Land, illustrations of costume, zoology and 
botany, while Dr. John Kitto, as editor, supplied ex- 
cellent notes. In 1838 Charles Knight, still seeking 
the diffusion of knowledge, began the monthly publi- 
cation of a "Pictorial History of England" edited by 
George Lillie Craik and Charles Macfarlane. It 
reached to the end of the reign of George II. in four 
volumes, but Mr. Macfarlane's strong political feel- 
ings caused him to give another four volumes to 
the reign of George III. The disproportion and the 
want of liberal tone in this part of the work greatly 
diminished its success. Mr. Craik contributed to the 
"Pictorial History of England" the chapters on Reli- 
gion, Literature, and Commerce with some aid from 
Sir Henry Ellis and from Mr. Andrew Bisset. Mr. 
Edward Poynter, father of the Royal Academician, 
wrote upon the Arts. Together with the Pictorial 
History of England there was running also, edited as 
well as published by himself in monthly numbers, a 
Pictorial Shakespeare, during the production of which 
his zeal for the study of Shakespeare grew. Another 
of Charles Knight's ventures was a work on "London" 
in weekly numbers. This extended to 2500 pages 



2l6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

giving sketches, by different writers, of London as it 
was and as it had been still with abundant woodcut 
illustration. In 1842 the seven volumes of the Pic- 
torial Shakespeare were completed. Charles Knight 
then published a Biography of Shakespeare written 
by himself and began to produce a Library Edition 
of the poet's works. From that time forward he used 
his position as a publisher for the diffusion of Shake- 
speare's works in various forms. "Knight's Store of 
Knowledge for all Readers" was opened with two 
numbers on Shakespeare by Charles Knight himself. 
After the Penny Cyclopaedia was finished, there ap- 
peared, in June 1844, the first number of "Knight's 
Weekly Volume," a series which was continued for two 
years without missing a week. Then it was con- 
tinued for another two years in a monthly issue as 
"the Shilling Volume." In volumes of this series new 
books appeared which have secured a lasting reputa- 
tion, among them George Lillie Craik's Sketch of the 
History of English Literature. At this time "the 
Penny Magazine" was declining in sale. Its last 
number appeared in December 1845, and the Society 
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, killed by the 
losses on its Biographical Dictionary, took leave of the 
world with an address dated the nth of March, 1846. 
A Memoir of Robert Chambers published by his 
surviving brother William in 1872 "with Autobiogra- 
phic Reminiscences" tells the career of two brothers 
who, like Charles Knight, wrote, and published, 
and powerfully contributed to the cheap diffusion of 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. ZIJ 

;nowledge. They were born at Peebles, William 
Chambers in April 1800, Robert in July 1802, each 
f them with six fingers on each hand and six toes 
n each foot. The outer fingers and toes were re- 
noved successfiilly in William's case, but in Robert's 
ase not without leaving tender places on the feet 
hat caused through life some pain in walking. Their 
ather employed weavers in the cotton manufacture, and 
ras agent also for Glasgow houses. When he went on 
lusiness to Glasgow, he travelled the forty miles on 
Dot, and was two days upon the road. Through too 
reat easiness in spending, lending, and giving credit 
.e sank in worldly position. The whole school educa- 
:on of William Chambers ended when he was thir- 
een, and cost, books included, about six pounds, 
"he fees at the elementary school were two and two 
ence a quarter, and at the Peebles Grammar School 
ve shillings a quarter. Five pounds in those days 
^ould carry the son of a Scottish burgher through a 
ourse of education that included such grounding in 
.atin and Greek as would prepare for the junior 
lasses at the Scottish Universities. The introduction 
f the power loom put an end to the father's business 
s an employer of handloom weavers, and he opened 
draper's shop in Peebles, at which he gave un- 
mited credit to the French prisoners of war quartered 
1 the town. They all went home at the peace in 
814, and not one of them ever paid him a farthing, 
lefore 1813 the business had ended in bankruptcy 
nd ruin. 



2l8 OP ENGLISH LITERATURE 

In December 1813 the family left Peebles for Edi: 
burgh, the son Robert, whose lameness confined hi 
much to his chair and who was looked upon as the schol; 
of the family, being left in Peebles to go on with h 
education. In Edinburgh William Chambers, in Mci 
18 14 and at the age of 14, became apprentice to 
bookseller, whom he was to serve for five years ; 
four shillings a week. At the close of 18 15 his fath(i 
got employment as manager of a salt manufactoi 
called Joppa Pans, on the seashore between Portobel'i 
and Musselburgh. It was established to do contn 
band trade by smuggling salt over the border, at | 
time when salt was subject to high duties in Englanii 
William was left in Edinburgh to keep himself on h 
four shillings a week. The rest of the family, iii 
eluding Robert, went to the smoky home at Jopp; 
Pans. Robert was at a classical school at Edinburg] 
with some vague hope of his being prepared for th 
Church, and at first he walked to and fro betwee 
school and the saltworks; afterwards he shared Wi 
Ham's Edinburgh garret to avoid the pain of the Ion 
daily walk. William's employer was agent for 
State Lottery, and the apprentice saved his mastcj 
postage by personal delivery of piles of circulars. H| 
went weary to bed, and had no time of his own bil 
what he could make by early rising. He and h; 
brother rose in summer at five o'clock to read. The 
worked at French in this way, read Locke and Adai 
Smith, taking notes as they studied. In winter, wai 
of fire and candle stood in the way of home wor] 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 2ig 

But a disreputable journeyman baker who sometimes 
earned a shilling a day by carrying advertisement 
boards of the lottery, introduced the bookish apprentice 
to a baker who was passionately fond of reading 
but had no leisure to read. If William Chambers 
would go at five o'clock in the morning and read to 
the baker and his two sons while they were preparing 
their batch, he should have for his fee a hot penny 
roll, fresh from the oven. So on winter mornings 
seated on a sack in the baker's cellar, with a penny 
candle stuck in a bottle by his side, William Chambers 
gave morning entertainments, by reading novels of 
Fielding and Smollett, also "Gil Bias." The entertain- 
ment occupied two hours and a half, its price being 
the penny roll, which was a breakfast. After payment 
of lodging there remained one and nine pence a week 
for board; and as Sundays were spent at the Salt 
Pans, this was three pence half penny a day for 
food. • 

Robert obtained first a little private teaching at 
Portobello; then a place in a counting house five 
miles from Edinburgh, which was ill paid and cost 
him a daily ten miles walk; then a place in a count- 
ing house at Leith. 

Trouble meanwhile came again over the house- 
hold at the Salt Pans. The father was knocked down 
and robbed when carrying home money collected in 
Edinburgh. He was disabled by the assault, and was 
dismissed by his employers. Henceforth he was ut- 
terly a broken man, and the care of the family rested 



220 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

upon the mother. She would set up some little busi- 
ness. William Chambers hurried home after busi- 
ness when he heard of his father's dismissal, and he 
says, "On my unexpected arrival near midnight — 
cold, wet, and wayworn — all was silent in that poor 
home. In darkness by my mother's bed side, I talked 
with her of the scheme she had projected. It was 
little I could do. Some insignificant savings were at 
her disposal, and so was a windfall over which I had 
cause for rejoicing. By a singular piece of good for- 
tune, I had the previous day been presented with half 
a guinea by a good-hearted tradesman, on being sent 
to him with the agreeable intelligence that he had 
got the sixteenth of a twenty thousand pound prize in 
the state lottery. The little bit of gold was put into 
my mother's hand. With emotion too great for words, 
my own hand was pressed gratefully in return. The 
loving pressure of that unseen hand in the midnight 
gloom j has it not proved more than the ordinary 
blessing of a mother on her son?" 

In 1818 Robert Chambers — then only sixteen — 
was dismissed, as stupid, from his counting house 
work at Leith. William who was older by two years 
and three months, and who, in May of the next year 
would be out of his apprenticeship, then advised his 
younger brother to give up all notion of seeking for 
employment and begin work for himself, though it 
could be only in the very humblest way, as bookseller. 
There was no money, but there were as many old 
books still in possession of the family as would make 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 221 

a row on a shelf twelve foot long. If they added their 
schoolbooks they would make another foot. William 
could supply from his small savings one or two cheap 
pocket Bibles, for which he knew that there was then 
growing demand. Here was a stock in trade. A 
poor shop in Leith Walk with room for a stall in 
front, w^as taken at a yearly rent of six pounds. Upon 
a plank in front of it the books of the family were 
placed, except only the Family Bible, which had come 
down for two hundred years from father to son. Wil- 
liam with his four shillings a week went to live with 
his brother, and in the following year, when, at nine- 
teen, he was out of his apprenticeship, he set up a 
business of his own in similar fashion. There were 
no family books to start with, but a travelling agent 
for the sale of cheap editions of old standard works 
at about half the price of those known as the "trade 
editions," came to Edinburgh and had a trade sale 
after a dinner. William Chambers, who had then 
nothing else to do, assisted before dinner in arranging 
for the sale, and next day helped in the packing up. 
He was asked what he was doing for himself, and 
replied that he was going to begin business without 
money. If he had money he would like, he said, to 
buy some of those cheap editions, for he thought he 
could sell them to advantage. The kindly agent liked 
his frankness and trusted him at once with the usual 
credit for ten poundsworth. He chose the books, 
packed them in an empty tea chest, borrowed a hotel 
truck and wheeled them to Leith Walk, where he 



222 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

would have his own separate stall. The last week's: 
payment of apprentice wages enabled him to buy a 
few deals from a woody ard with which he made his 
own board, and a pair of trestles. So he began busi- 
ness at once, in summer weather. His books were of 
a saleable kind, and with great frugality and prudent i 
management the little became more. He learnt to! 
put the new books into boards himself, and thus add I 
three pence or four pence to the profit of each volume 
by buying them in sheets. In bad weather he made 
copies of poems and bits of prose in fine penmanship, 
in hope of selling them for albums. The fine penman- 
ship brought him the goodwill of one customer who 
gave him a large order for books handsomely bound, 
with leave to bring them in small parcels as he could 
afford to get them and with promise that each parcel 
should be paid for on delivery. Next year he was 
able to add to the shop a backroom for a dwelling. 
The bed he put in it he curtained with brown paper. 
Next, he wrote an account of David Ritchie, the 
original of Walter Scott's Black Dwarf, got it printed 
and made a little profit on the sale. This suggested 
that if he could compass a printing press of his own, 
it might be made a source of profit. Opportunity 
came, when a struggling man was selling off and quit- 
ting the neighbourhood. He had constructed a rude 
printing press for himself, a machine that stood on a 
table, had a printing surface eighteen inches by twelve, 
and creaked in working so that it could be heard two 
houses off. For three pounds William Chambers 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. ^23 

ought this press and a small stock of worn type, 
laving contrived to make or buy what else was in- 
ispensable, he began the slow labour of printing with 
tiis machine an edition of 750 copies of the Songs of 
lurns. There was only type enough for 8 small pages, 
nd to produce an edition in this way the press had 
) be pulled twenty thousand times. The reward of 
is patience was a profit of nine pounds. Part of this 
ould be spent on improvements of the printing 
lachine. By cutting letters on wood with a chisel 
nd penknife bold headings were obtained for posting 
ills. So the small business improved a little. William 
Ihambers wrote and printed an account of the Scottish 
ripsies. Robert had been, with equal thrift, improv- 
ig his little business as bookseller, and the two 
rothers in 1821 joined their wits in the production 
f a magazine of which Robert was to be chief writer, 
/illiam printer and publisher and also writer as far 
3 time allowed. The magazine, called "the Kaleido- 
:ope, or Edinburgh Literary Amusement," made its 
rst appearance on the 6th of October 182 1. It was 
) give sixteen 8vo pages for three pence. As William 
ad to set the types, to print the sheet in halves, 
ork off all copies and stitch the halves together in 
le odd time to be spared from his general business, 
the Kaleidoscope" obliged him to work sixteen hours 
day and allow only a quarter of an hour for meals, 
he venture paid expenses, but no more, and the last 
amber of the Kaleidoscope appeared on the 12th of 
muary 1822. 



224 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

By this time each of the brothers had so manag 
his stock and kept down his expenses as to be wob 
about two hundred pounds. In 1822 Robert wrote a: 
William printed "Illustrations of the Author of Wav* 
ley." Robert at that time removed from Leith Wa 
to India Place, and William in the following ye 
removed to Broughton Street. Robert now develop^ 
more fully his literary taste. He wrote his "Traditio 
of Edinburgh," produced in numbers, published in t1 
volumes in 1824, when he was only twenty- two yea 
old. He obtained the goodwill of Sir Walter Scott, , 
John Wilson, and others. There followed from Robe 
Chambers, in 1825, "Walks in Edinburgh;" and I 
1826, "Popular Rhymes of Scotland." William Chat 
bers sold the old printing press to another beginne 
and enlarged his ventures. He wrote a "Book of Scd 
land" which he sold to a publisher for ^30. TI; 
books they had produced caused the two brothers, b 
chiefly William, to be employed by a publisher 
compilation of a "Gazetteer of Scotland." For th 
they were paid a hundred pounds. In those days tl 
"Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" b 
gan its career. The movement towards cheap ar 
wholesome literature, as an aid to citizen-buildin 
gathered force, and William Chambers suggested 
his brother Robert that they should try to produce 
cheap weekly journal containing matter that wou] 
really benefit the many. Robert agreed to give a 
possible help with his pen, but was discouraged t 
the general character and condition of the low price 



IN THE RETGN OF VICTORIA. 225 

papers. Accordingly, with William Chambers for 
editor, there appeared on the 4th of February 1832 
the first number of "Chambers's Edinburgh Journal," 
price three half pence. "The strongholds of ignorance," 
said the editor in his opening address, "though not 
unassailed, remain to be carried." In a few days that 
first number had attained a sale in Scotland alone of 
fifty thousand. Copies of the third number were sent 
to an agent in London, and the sale then rose to 
eighty thousand. So it was that the brothers Chambers 
produced their journal, which still lives and thrives, a 
few weeks before the appearance in London, on the 
31st of March, of Charles Knight's "Penny Maga- 
zine." 

After the fourteenth number of Chambers's Journal 
had appeared, the brothers no longer carried on separate 
businesses but formed themselves into the firm of 
W. & R. Chambers. In 1833 they began to produce 
a series of sheets on distinct subjects entitled " Cham- 
bers's Information for the People," which, as com- 
pleted, forms two 8vo volumes, and of which there 
were sold 270,000 sets, nearly two millions of sheets. 
In 1835 there was planned and begun a series of 
treatises and schoolbooks entitled " Chambers's Educa- 
tional Course," to which Robert Chambers contributed 
a "History of the British Empire" and a "History of 
the English Language and Literature." Volumes have 
been added to this series year after year until the 
present day. That was the position of the brothers 
Chambers at the beginning of the reign of Victoria. 

Of English Literature^ jc 



226 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ' 

In 1838 William Chambers visited the schools in the 
Netherlands to acquire knowledge that would aid him 
in his practical attempts to advance education in 
Great Britain. What he found he told in a bookj 
published in 1839 ^^ a "Tour in Holland and the 
Rhine Countries." Another enterprise of the firm was 
a series of publications for parish, school, regimental, 
prison and other libraries, called "Chambers's Miscel- 
lany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts." These had 
a very large sale, and were completed in twenty 
volumes. Again another enterprise, begun in 1859 
and completed in ten yearly volumes, was "Chambers's^ 
Encyclopaedia, a Dictionary of Universal Knowledge; 
for the People." 

The rough handmade printing press, bought for 11 
three pounds, to which William Chambers had risen 
with the dawn from his poor bed curtained with( 
brown paper, had by this time grown into twelve h 
steam printing machines, in an establishment that! i 
gathered under one roof editors, compositors, stereo- 
typers, wood engravers, printers, bookbinders, andj 
which sent abroad an average daily produce of fifty | 
thousand sheets of publications various in kind butjfj 
all of service to society. 

In 1844 Robert Chambers, with the help of Dr. 
Robert Carruthers of Inverness, completed in two large 1 1 
volumes a "Cyclopaedia of English Literature," intended ij 
to diffuse a knowledge of the great English writers by 
setting numerous extracts from their writings in brief |i 
records of their lives. This work has been, and still 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 



22"]- 



is, widely serviceable. A new and revised edition of it 
was produced in i860. Essays from Chambers's 
Journal and other works of Robert Chambers were 
collected in 1847 as his "Select Writings" in seven 
volumes. For some years past, he had been studying 
geology. In 1840 he had been elected a member of 
the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has generally 
been credited with the authorship of a book published 
in 1844, "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" 
that set many talking and some thinking, and was one 
bf the first signs of a new rise in the tide of scientific 
thought. "Ancient Sea Margins," published in 1848, 
svas an acknowledged book. William Chambers, in 1 849, 
bought an estate in his native county, and in 1859 
Dresented to his native town a building known as "the 
"hambers Institution," containing such aids to in- 
iividual growth as a library, a reading room, a lecture 
lall, a museum, a Gallery of Art. In 1 864 he published 
L "History of Peeblesshire." Robert Chambers would 
lave been made Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1848, 
f rancorous feeling had not been stirred against the 
upposed author of a work inconsistent with a literal 
aith in the book of Genesis. But in 1865, and again 
n 1869, William Chambers was honoured by his fellow 
ownsmen in Edinburgh with the office of chief magi- 
trate, and in 1872 the Edinburgh University conferred 
n him its honorary L. L. D. degree. That was the 
ear in which he published his memoir of his brother 
Lobert, who had died in March 187 1. Robert's later 
ooks had been "the Life and Works of Burns" in 

15* 



22^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

1 851; "Tracings of Iceland and the Faroe Islands" ir 
1856; "Domestic Annals of Scotland from the Reforma- 
tion to the Revolution" in 1858; the same work con- 
tinued in 1861 to the Rebellion. His "Book of Days,', 
a work upon which great labour was spent, was ir 
course of issue from i860 to 1867. Some help tha- 
was anticipated failed him, and the strain of labouii 
was too great. While engaged in the work, he los^^ 
his wife, also a daughter. "The Book of Days" wail 
a success, but he himself spoke of it as his death blowj 
He went for health to St. Andrews, was made L. L. Dj 
by the University there, and known as "the Doctor;'; 
but vigour of life was gone. In the course of his lifd 
he had produced, says his brother, upwards of seventh 
volumes, besides detached papers which could hardl;| 
be counted. So it is that our strong men now figh| 
with the dragons. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 229 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF WRITERS WHO WERE BETWEEN FIFTY AND SIXTY YEARS 
OLD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE REIGN. 

Aged between fifty and sixty at the accession of 
Victoria were Sir Henry Ellis, 60; Henry Hallam, 59; 
Thomas Moore, 58; Horace Smith, 58; James Morier, 57; 
John Wilson Croker, 57; Edward Jesse, 57; David 
Brewster, 56; Ebenezer Elliott, 56; William Jerdan, 55; 
Benjamin Thorpe, 54; Leigh Hunt, 53; Frederick Mar- 
ryat, 51. Of these Thomas Moore and Leigh Hunt were 
associated with the literature of the past. 

Moore was born in May 1779 in a tavern in Dublin. 
He was a clever child who could be set on a table to 
recite verses, and used also as vocalist to enliven 
domestic suppers. A good mother was determined 
that her clever boy should be well taught, and it was 
to her that he owed a liberal education at Trinity 
College Dublin, which was opened in 1753 to Roman 
Catholics, although they were still excluded from its 
honours. It was his mother, again, who scraped to- 
gether money enough to send her boy to London to be 
entered at the Temple. He took with him a Trans- 
lation of Anacreon into free verse, which he obtained 
leave to dedicate to the Prince Regent. It was 
published in i8oo, and followed in 1802 by frivolities 



230 OF I:NGLISH LITERATURE 

of his own, in verse, entitled "the Poetical Works of the 
late Thomas Little." Lord Moira got for Moore ir 
1803 an appointment in Bermuda. He went to it, bu 
did not take it seriously, and left it in charge of i 
deputy. In 1806 he published "Odes and Epistles'i 
which Francis Jeffrey condemned for their immorality^ 
explaining, after he had met the author in a bloodies^ 
duel, that he called them immoral "in a literary sense.': 
Jeffrey and Moore became good friends. In 1 8 1 1 Thomaa 
Moore married. He could put smooth lines, with littki 
sense in them, to melodies of his own shaping, ano 
warble them to his own accompaniment. A kindly^ 
witty, little man with such a gift could add greatly tcl 
an evening's entertainment. For want of strength oil 
character Moore, therefore, became a diner-out, and sank! 
like Sterne into the position of an ornament at great; 
men's tables. He loved his ^\i^, but she was not in-i 
vited to dine out with him. He loved his country, and 
of his serious verse the best is to be found in one oi» 
two of the "Irish Melodies" that he began to produce 
in 1807, and that appeared, with the music set to Irishj 
airs, in the course of the next years. "The Twopenny! 
Post Bag," in 181 2, showed an aptitude for light political 
satire that gave breadth to a reputation founded on the 
Irish Melodies. Three thousand pounds were offered to 
Moore for a long poem. It appeared in 18 17, asi 
"Lalla Rookh," a dainty confection of Eastern romance. 
In the next year he went to Paris, and again showed 
his skill in playful verse satire with "the Fudge Family 
in Paris." His reputation was then at its highest. 



m THE REION OF VICTORIA. 23 I 

Other works followed, including a Life of Sheridan, and 
a Life of Byron, in 1830, for which Moore received 
two thousand guineas. Li 1835 the Whigs gave him 
a pension of £ 300 a year. He had not only enter- 
tained them well at Holland House with his musical 
genius, but he had aided their political warfare with 
rhymed satire that was airy, witty and good-natured. 
Moore could not reach the force of Byron as satirist, 
but if he had less force he had more kindliness.* 
In the reign of Victoria Thomas Moore published 
"Alciphron," in 1839. ^i^ Poetical Works were col- 
lected in ten volumes in 1840-2, and he closed his 
career as a writer with a "History of Ireland," published 
in 1842-5. In 1848 his mind failed. He was then 
69 years old, and he died in February 1852 at the 
age of 73. His "Memoirs, Journals, and Correspon- 
dence" were published after his death by his friend 
Lord John Russell, afterwards Earl Russell, who was 
by thirteen years his junior. 

James Henry Leigh Hunt, like Moore, had been in 
contact with Byron and his friends. His grandfather 
was a Rector at Bridgetown, Barbadoes. His father, 
educated in America, graduated at Philadelphia and 
New York, became a lawyer in America, held with 
the British Government in the American Revolution, 
and was driven to England. In England, as he could 
not practise law, he was ordained, and ran into debt 



* Moore's Poetical Works are in five volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 



2^2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE - j 

as preacher at a chapel in Paddington. He becamei 
afterwards tutor for a time to Mr. Leigh, nephew tof 
the Duke of Chandos, and it was from him that the 
son born at Southgate in 1784 received his name of 
Leigh Hunt. The father ended a career of debts and 
difficuhies in 1809. Leigh Hunt entered Christ's; 
Hospital at seven years old, after Coleridge had left 
for the University. When he left school, he wrotq 
verses which his father caused to be published in 1 802 
under the name of "Juvenilia," with a portrait of the; 
young poet, and a long list of subscribers, chiefly^ 
beaten up from among members of the admiring] 
father's congregations. Then followed two or three^ 
years of idling, playgoing, reading, and playing atf 
being a lawyer's clerk in the office of a brother 
Stephen. Li 1805 Leigh Hunt's brother John set up 
a paper called "the News," and Leigh wrote criticisms^ 
for his paper, some of which were in the appendix of 
a volume, published in 1807, called "Critical Essays; 
on the Performers of the London Theatres." At the 
beginning of 1808 the two brothers sat up "theJ 
Examiner," and Leigh gave up a clerkship in the Warj 
Office which had been given to him not long before.] 
In 1809 he married. "The Examiner" fought for re- 
forms in a way that gave some offence to Whigs and 
much to Tories. In 18 12 "the Examiner," comment- 
ing upon some fulsome adulation of the Prince Regent 
by the Morning Post, asked who could imagine "that 
this 'Exciter of desire' (bravo, Messieurs of the Post I) 
— this 'Adonis in loveliness' was a corpulent man of 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 2^^ 

fifty! — in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasur- 
able, honourable, virtuous, true, and immortal prince, 
was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and 
ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the com- 
panion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just 
closed half a century without one single claim on the 
gratitude of his country or the respect of posterity!" 
A prosecution for libel having been founded upon this 
article, Leigh Hunt and his brother were sentenced 
to two years imprisonment and a fine of five hundred 
pounds each. He was imprisoned from the 3d of 
February 18 13 to the same date in 181 5, in a pleasant 
room and with much freedom of action, "the Examiner" 
being meanwhile continued. In 18 15 Leigh Hunt 
published "The Feast of the Poets" and "The Descent 
of Liberty." Li 1 8 1 6 he completed and published his 
"Story of Rimini," a development in graceful, easy 
rhyme of the story of Dante's Paolo and Francesca. 
Much of it had been written in prison. He had ac- 
quired the friendship of Shelley whose "Hymn to 
Intellectual Beauty" first appeared in "the Examiner." 
Shelley's generosity, of which many had experience, 
was once shown to Leigh Hunt in the form of a 
present of fourteen hundred pounds to get him out of 
debt. "I was not extricated," says Leigh Hunt, "for 
I had not yet learned to be careful: but the shame of 
not being so, after such generosity, and the pain 
which my friend afterwards underwent when I was in 
trouble and he was helpless, were the first causes of 
my thinking of money matters to any purpose." Shelley 



234 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and Keats first became acquainted with each other! 
under Leigh Hunt's roof. In 1817, Leigh Hunt 
published Essays by himself and William Hazlitt 
under the name of "the Round Table." In October 
1819 he began and continued for sixty-six weeks 
a paper called "the Indicator", named from an African 
bird, the Cuculus Indicator of Linnaeus that "indicates 
to honey hunters where the nests of wild bees are to 
be found." "The Examiner" was then declining., 
Shelley and Byron had a proposal for a Liberal journal. 
Leigh Hunt was tempted to go to Italy and talk about 
it. On that errand he left England in November 
1 82 1. The issue of the scheme was a quarterly 
called "the Liberal," of which four numbers ap- 
peared in 1822 and 1823. The first number contained 
Byron's best satire, the "Vision of Judgment," the 
second his "Heaven and Earth," and the fourth his 
translation from Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore." Back 
in England, Leigh Hunt was again pleasantly active. 
For half a year, from January to July, 1828, he published 
some of his pleasantest essays in a series of papers 
called "the Companion." In September 1830 he set 
up a literary and theatrical paper called "the 
Tatler," which lasted until February 1832. It was a 
new form of a paper he had started as "the Chat of 
the Week," which brought with it difficulties about 
stamp duty. In 1832 he published "Sir Ralph Esher," 
a fictitious autobiography of a gentleman of the Court 
of Charles the Second. From April 1834 to December 
1835 he was producing a cheap miscellany of essays, 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 235 

criticisms and quotations, called the "London Journal," 
which avowed its purpose to be one with that of the 
brothers Chambers in their "Edinburgh Journal;" only 
its character was to be "a little more southern and 
literary." It was to deal with "the ornamental part 
of utility." Its purpose, indeed, was that which was 
fulfilled by the whole life of Leigh Hunt, to commend 
to the world, for its own health, the kindly graces of 
good literature. In 1835 ^^ published a poem con- 
demning the War Spirit. It was entitled "Captain 
Sword and Captain Pen," and had Milton's lines from 
Paradise Regained for its motto: 

"If there be in glory ought of good, 
It may by means far different be attained, 
Without ambition, war, or violence. " 

In this spirit Leigh Hunt passed into the reign of 
Victoria. Years had sweetened a temper always gentle, 
and the civilizing touch of his genius was to be felt 
even in the weakest of his works. In February 1840 
his play of "the Legend of Florence" was produced 
at Covent Garden, Miss Ellen Tree — afterwards Mrs. 
Charles Kean — playing the heroine. The Queen went 
twice to see it and commanded its repetition at 
Windsor. Its theme was the legend of a wife, buried 
when in a trance, awaking in the tomb, rejected by 
her husband, and seeking shelter in her lover's house. 
A criticism attributed to Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer 
spoke of it as "one of the finest plays that has been 
■produced since Beaumont and Fletcher." 



236 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

In 1840 Leigh Hunt wrote for Editions of their 
Works critical biographies of Wycherley, Congreve, 
Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and Sheridan. In 1842 he 
published "the Palfrey," a poem on an old romance 
theme. In 1844 a volume entitled "Imagination and 
Fancy" had for its purpose to give selections of best 
passages from English poets, with aids to the percep- 
tion of their beauty. It included an essay upon the 
Nature of Poetry. A companion book of "Wit and 
Humour, selected from the English Poets," with an 
illustrative essay on Wit and Humour, followed in 1846. 
In these books Leigh Hunt was still showing the honey 
hunters where the nests of wild bees are to be found. 
In 1846 he published also "Stories from the Italian 
Poets; with Lives of the Writers," bringing home to 
English readers some taste of the honey in Italian 
hives. In 1 848 appeared as a book "A Jar of Honey 
from Mount Hybla," first published in "Ainsworth's 
Magazine" in 1 844. His honey was made of the history, 
the legends, and the poetry of Sicily. In the same 
year, 1848, a volume called "The Town" was formed 
of sketches of London, many of which had first ap- 
peared in Leigh Hunt's "London Journal;" it is a 
London graced with pleasant memories of wits and 
poets. In 1849 followed "A Book for a Corner," a 
selection of things so uttered in verse or prose that 
"age cannot wither nor custom stale" their infinite 
variety. In 1849 Leigh Hunt provided a book of 
what he called "Reading for Railways: or Anecdotes 
and other Short Stories, Reflections, Maxims, Cha- 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 237 

racteristics, Passages of Wit, Humour, and Poetry, &c." 
In 1850, when his age was sixty-six, he published his 
Autobiography rich in recollections of the wits and 
poets who were friends of his youth, frank also in a 
self-revelation that extenuated nothing and assuredly 
set nothing down in malice. 

In 1853 Leigh Hunt published a volume entitled 
"the Religion of the Heart. A Manual of Faith and 
Duty," expressing pure morality, with love to God and 
Man, but shrinking from the dogmas of theology. In 
1855 he added to his volume on "the Town" another 
that contained memorials of Kensington, "the Old 
Court Suburb," of which some chapters had been con- 
tributed to "Household Words," In the same year he 
published a selection of the beauties of Beaumont and 
Fletcher, and a collection of his own " Stories in Verse." 
Of four unpublished plays that remained by him, one, 
"Lover's Amazements," was produced with success in 
1858, the year before its author's death at the age of 
seventy five. He had written also an essay of con- 
siderable length on "the Sonnet," as part of a book 
planned in America, which appeared in 1867 as "The 
Book of the Sonnet. Edited by Leigh Hunt and 
S. Adams Lee." 

Horace Smith, who lived through the first ten years 
of the reign of Victoria, and contributed some novels 
to the Literature of the Reign, was about five years 
older than Leigh Hunt. The brothers James and 
Horace Smith were sons of a solicitor. James the 
elder followed his father's profession and Horace be- 



238- OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

came a stockbroker. In 1812 they grew famous by- 
clever parodies of the styles of the chief poets who 
were supposed to have contributed Addresses to be 
spoken at the reopening of Drury Lane. "The Re- 
jected Addresses" went through twenty four editions. 
James, the elder brother, wrote no more, and died in 
1839. But Horace produced a dozen books in the 
days of George IV. and William IV., his first and best 
novel being "Brambletye House" in 1826. In the 
years between 1840 and 1845 Horace Smith published 
"Oliver Cromwell;" "the Moneyed Man;" "Adam 
Brown;" "Arthur Arundel" and "Love and Mesmerism." 
In 1846 his "Poetical Works" were collected. Leigh 
Hunt writes that Shelley once said to him, "I know 
not what Horace Smith must take me for sometimes: 
I am afraid he must think me a strange fellow: but is 
it not odd, that the only truly generous person I ever 
knew, who had money to be generous with, was a 
stockbroker! And he writes poetry too," continued 
Shelley, his voice rising in a fervour of astonish- 
ment — "he writes poetry, and pastoral dramas, and 
yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and 
is still generous!" 

Ebenezer Elliott, who became known as "the Corn 
Law Rhymer," was born in 1781, one of the eight sur- 
vivers of eleven children. His father was a clerk in 
a foundry at Masborough, a suburb of Rotherham in 
Yorkshire, where his salary was sixty or seventy pounds 
a year with house, candle and coal. His mother once 
confided to young Ebenezer a dream of her maiden 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA, 239 

life: "I had placed under my pillow a shank bone of 
mutton to dream upon; and I dreamed that I saw a 
little broad-set, dark, ill-favoured man, with black 
hair, black eyes, thick stub-nose and tup-shins: it was 
thy father." It was a lively father who preached ultra- 
Calvinism once a month on Sundays, and gloried on 
weekdays in Cromwell and Washington. After some 
schooling, young Ebenezer was put to work in the 
foundry. An illustrated book of botany drew him to 
plants; he traced the pictures, sought and dried the 
plants. He heard his brother one day read a part of 
Thomson's "Seasons" in which the polyanthus and 
auricula were described, compared the verse afterwards 
with the living flowers, and was drawn to delight in 
Thomson. Then he began to versify, with an imita- 
tion of Thomson's description of a thunderstorm. 
When Ebenezer was fourteen years old, a poor curate 
died and bequeathed his books to Ebenezer's father. 
At twelve, he says, he had almost known the Bible by 
heart; at sixteen he could repeat, without missing a 
word, the first, second, and sixth books of "Paradise 
Lost." His first publication was a poem written at 
the age of seventeen called "the Vernal Walk," for 
which he found a printer at Cambridge. Then he 
tried tales, and even a dramatic poem upon Bothwell. 
Till the age of 23 he was still working in the Foundry, 
in which he obtained a share. But the foundry failed 
at Rotherham, and in 1831 Ebenezer Elliott began 
business apart in Sheffield, with ^100 of borrowed 
money. He dealt in the raw material of Sheffield 



240 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

cutlery, and throve for the next six years. In 1832I 
he published the "Corn Law Rhymes," by which he! 
made his mark in Literature. Intense conviction that 
most of the troubles of the country were rooted inii 
Protection gave force to the use of his gift as a rhymeri 
for attack upon the Corn Laws. And what, he askedj 
in the Prologue to his book. 

And what but scorn and slander will reward 

The rabble's poet, and his honest song? 
Gambler for blanks, thou play'st an idiot's card; 

For, sure to fall, the weak attacks the strong. ; 

Aye! but what strength is theirs whose might is based on wrong?' 

At the beginning of the reign of Victoria, Ebenezerl 
Elliott was in business at Sheffield with a wife andi 
family in his home at Upperthorpe. He still gave^ 
definite form to his conception of what man has made] 
of man, and with the zeal of a writer to whom one.^^ 
truth fervidly apprehended stands for all truth, heldj 
that "the Corn Laws are the cause of all the crime] 
that is committed." In 1842 he gave up business, 
realising about seven thousand pounds, and withdrew! 
to an eight roomed cottage that he buih for himself! 
on land bought at Great Houghton near Barnsley. He 
had put six sons out into the world, and there re- 
mained only the wife and two daughters in the happy 
home. One of his sayings was that "it is a positive 
duty to marry, and also to be a Radical, that good I 
legislation may allow marriage to be as happy as it 
ought." He was correcting proof sheets of his last volume 
"More Prose and Verse," just before his death in 1849.. 



IN THE RETCxN OF VICTORIA. 24 I 

The forms of character are infinitely various, though 
a score of generic types would probably contain them 
all. The shrewd, honest single-minded zealot, who 
fights for one cause, which is to him the cause of 
causes, and who looks neither to the right nor left of 
it, may be as great as Luther; as serviceable for one 
battle as Ebenezer Elliott; as weak as the feeblest 
crotchetmonger; who falls out of whatever ranks he 
enters if his comrades do not give their whole minds 
to the worship of' some fetish of his own. In all the 
type is clear, and so is its place or use in the world's 
history. The type of the soldier has not changed since 
the beginning of history; nor has that of the scholar. 

The Principal Librarian of the British Museum 
It the accession of Victoria was Sir Henry Ellis, 
aorn in 1777. He was educated at Merchant Tay- 
-or's school and at Oxford; published a History of 
5t. Leonard's Shoreditch when he was 21; graduated; 
obtained a Fellowship from his College, St. John's, and 
vas an Assistant Librarian, first at the Bodleian, then 
n the British Museum. He married in 1805; ^^ 1806 
vas made Keeper of the Printed Books and in 18 12 
deeper of the MSS. in the British Museum. He was 
^ellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal 
jociety. In 18 14 he was appointed Secretary to the 
Trustees. In 18 16 he published an introduction to 
Domesday Book. In 18 18 he edited Dugdale's "Mo- 
lasticon;" in 1824 published a first collection of 
■Letters Illustrative of English History." In 1827 he 
v^as appointed Principal Librarian of the Museum, and 

0/ English Literature. 1 6 



242 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

about the same time published a second volume of hi 
Illustrative Letters. In 1832 Mr. Ellis was knighte; 
by William IV. Sir Henry Ellis wrote on the Townele 
Marbles in 1834, ^n the Elgin and Phigaleian Marblej 
in 1836. His chief contribution to Victorian Literatur 
was a third volume of "Letters Illustrative of Englis- 
History," published in 1846. His wife died in i85- 
within a year of their golden wedding day, and tw 
years later he resigned his office of Librarian, his ag 
then being seventy-nine. But he lived on into hi 
ninety-second year, dying in January 1869. Bliu: 
study of the past, as Selden said, the too studioui 
affectation of bare and sterile antiquity is nothing elsi 
but to be exceeding busy about nothing, but, he addec' 
"the neglect or only vulgar regard of the fruitful an<^ 
precious part of it, which gives necessary light to th, 
present in matter of State, Law, History, and the underi 
standing of good authors, is but preferring that kind a 
ignorant infancy which our short life alone allows u 
before the many ages of former experience and ob 
servation, which may so accumulate years to us as 
we had lived from the beginning of time." In thi 
true sense Sir Henry Ellis was an antiquary. 

Like honour is due to Benjamin Thorpe and Josepl 
Bosworth, who were the revivers in this country of th< 
study of the ancient Literature and Language of th* 
people. Thorpe was born in 1783, Bosworth in 1790 
Benjamin Thorpe in the course of a long life of abou 
ninety years, edited all the chief pieces of Firs 
English or Anglo-Saxon Literature; Caedmon, in 183; 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 243 

for the Society of Antiquaries; in 1834, his "Analecta 
Anglo-Saxonica" included ^Ifric's Colloquy and the fine 
fragment of Judith. Within the reign of Victoria Mr. 
Thorpe edited, in 1842, the important collection of 
poems known as the "Codex Exoniensis," in 1846 the 
"Anglo-Saxon Gospels," in 1 853 "King Alfred's Orosius," 
in 1855 "Beowulf," in 1865 the "Diplomatarium Ang- 
licum ^vi Saxonici," a collection of English Charters 
from the time of Ethelbert to the Conquest. Thorpe 
also printed at Copenhagen in 1830 a translation of 
Erasmus Rask's Grammar of Anglo-Saxon, and in 1865 
reproduced it in a cheap form for the use of students. 
Benjamin Thorpe's studies in later life extended to 
Icelandic, and he published in 1866 a translation of 
Saemund's Edda. 

Dr. Bosworth, who published in 1823 a small 
Anglo-Saxon Grammar, produced a substantial Anglo- 
Saxon Dictionary at the beginning of the reign, in 
1838, w^hich he reproduced in a cheap form revised 
and abridged for the common use of students ten 
years later. He was at work upon the larger revision 
and the full elaboration of his dictionary when he died, 
but he found time to produce in 1855 a standard edi- 
1 tion of the text of "King Alfred's Orosius" from collation 
; of MSS. In Oxford alone had the attempts made in 
: the past to found University Professorships of Anglo- 
Saxon not entirely failed. Dr. Bosworth occupied the 
chair of Anglo-Saxon when he died, and left provision 
by his will for the re-establishment of a like Chair at 
! Cambridge. Such students as these have strengthened 

16* 



2 44 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the foundation of a scientific study of the past,) 
but History had varied little from the form of gene-j 
ralization that had been established by the in 
fluence of Hume and Gibbon when Henry Hallam] 
wrote. 

Henry Hallam, son of a Dean of Bristol, was born 
in 1777. He studied at Eton and Oxford, settled in 
London, and was among the first contributors to "the 
Edinburgh Review," In 18 18 he published the earliest I 
of his three histories, a "View of the State of Europe ' 
during the Middle Ages." Its wealth of good matter! 
was kept at arm's length from the reader by use of at 
Latin vocabulary and the conventional style which in^ 
18 18 was still thought by many to be dignified. The 
style of the second work "the Constitutional History of j 
England from the Accession of Henry VII. to the 
Death of George IL," published in 1827, was far 
better. Anxieties over a first book no longer op- 
pressed him. He had the dignity of a real interest 
in his theme, a theme to his taste, and he expressed 
accurately the result of calm and clear thought work- 
ing upon knowledge. Of English Constitutional History 
before the reign of Henry VII. Hallam had given a 
sketch in his "View of Europe during the Middle 
Ages." The superiority of Hallam's "Constitutional 
History" to his next book is very distinct. This third 
history was published at the beginning of the present 
reign, in 1837 -g, and is an "Introduction to the 
Literature of Europe in the 15th, i6th, and 17th cen- 
turies." Henry Hallam had lost in 1833 his eldest 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 245 

son, the A. H. H. of Tennyson's "In Memoriam." Other 
griefs, through sickness and deaths or dread of deaths 
at home, troubled the mind of one of the gentlest of 
scholars. This may have weakened his hold on his 
work; but his sense of poetry was weak, and he was 
a blind guide to the study of the poets. Those 
parts of the work that had real interest for its writer, 
that touched the line of his own tastes and studies, 
and came fairly within reach of his clear judgment, 
are, however, of enduring value. Henry Hallam died 
in January 1859. His books live and will live. No 
historian of our time has ventured on as wide a range 
of study, or has shown a wider range of power. 

Two novelists are yet to be named among the 
wiiters who were nearly of Hallam's age; they are 
James Morier and Captain Marryat. James Morier, 
born in 1780, was appointed in 18 10 British Envoy 
to the Court of Persia. He published in 1812 his 
"Earlier Travels through Persia, Armenia, Asia Minor 
to Constantinople," and in 18 18 published "A second 
Journey through Persia." In 1824 he used his know- 
ledge of Persian life in a first novel "the Adventures 
of Hajji Baba in Ispahan," which was followed in 
1828 by "Hajji Baba in England," where he is duly 
impressed by the "moonfaced Bessies" and other 
wonders of the land. Hajji Baba having established 
firmly Morier's credit as a lively novelist with a theme 
of his own and master of it, there followed, still with 
more or less in them of the humour or romance of 
Persian life, in 1832 "Zohrab," and in 1834 "Ayesha." 



^4-6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Within the present reign he published in 1837 "Abel. 
Allnut;" in 1839 "the Banished;" in 1841 "thej 
Mirza;" in 1842 "Martin Toutrond." James Morier 
died in 1848. 

Frederick Marryat, born in 1786, like Morier drew 
his novels from a side of life, with humours of its own, 
which was familiar to him and new to most of his 
readers. He distinguished himself in the navy during 
the war time before 18 14, was made a captain for 
his services in the Burmese war, and earned a good 
service pension. In 1834 ^^ broke fresh ground for 
the public entertainment with "Peter Simple," a light- 
hearted novel of sailor life and its oddities. It was 
immediately followed by a second novel, not less plea- 
sant, "Jacob Faithful." In the following year Marryat 
published a collection of short stories, "The Pacha of 
many Tales," and then came another sailor's novel, 
"Japhet in Search of a Father." Upon the three 
novels "Peter Simple," "Jacob Faithful," and "Japhet 
in Search of a Father" Captain Marryat's reputation 
rested. He never surpassed them, but in all that fol- 
lowed there was wholesome variety and always a fresh 
breath from the sea. "Midshipman Easy," and "the 
Pirate," and "Three Cutters" were published at the 
end of the reign of William IV. In the reign of 
Victoria, during its first ten years, Captain Marryat re- 
mained a busy writer, and produced a dozen novels, 
beginning with "Snarleyyow, or the Dog Fiend," in 
1837, ^^^ ending in 1847 with "the Children of the 
Forest." He died in August 1848. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 247 

A daughter, Florence, born in the year of the ac- 
cession of Victoria, has inherited some touch of her 
father's skill and is known as Florence Marryat — now 
Mrs. Francis Lean, author of many novels* that are 
widely read. She published also in 1872 the "Life 
and Letters" of her father.* 

William Jerdan, born at Kelso in 1782, lived to 
the age of eighty-seven, and at the age of 84 published, 
in 1866, a book about "Men I have known." His way 
of life brought him for half a century in close rela- 
tion with good writers. He began life with little 
education, had a desire towards the business of litera- 
ture, became an active journalist, wrote for newspapers 
and was for two or three years part proprietor and 
editor of "the Sun," but he had a quarrel with a 
joint proprietor that found its way into the Court of 
Chancery. In 18 17 William Jerdan founded "the 
Literary Gazette," earliest of the modern literary 
papers; earliest of all was the "Mercurius Librarius," 
started in 1680. William Jerdan was editor of "the 
Literary Gazette" for ^^ years, from 181 7 to 1850, 
and in that position had abundant opportunity of 
busying himself among the authors. A literary paper 
called "the Athenaeum" had been started by Dr. Aikin 
in 1807, but it died in 1809. The name was revived 
for a literary paper that was among the feebler ven- 
tures of James Silk Buckingham, and Jerdan's "Literary 

* The Life of Captain Marryat is in one volume, and all the 
novels of both father and daughter are in 53 volumes of theTauchnitz 
Collection. 



248 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ! 

Gazette, though not vigorous, had its own way until' 
"the Athenaeum" passed into the hands of Charles 
Wentworth Dilke (born in 1789) who had then retired 
on a pension from the Navy Pay Office. Under Mr. 
Dilke's vigorous management "the Athenaeum" soon 
became the leading literary journal, and "the Literary 
Gazette" gave but a dim light during the latter years 
of William Jerdan's management. After quitting it, 
he wrote his "Autobiography" in four volumes, pub- 
lished in 1853-4. "The Literary Gazette" struggled 
for life until 1862 when it tried the effect of change 
of name, and became "the Parthenon." As "the Par- 
thenon" it died in 1863. "The Athenaeum" has 
maintained its position. Various attempts have made 
to provide general readers with a second weekly lite- 
rary paper. From 1844 to 1863 there was "the Critic;" 
from 1863 to 1867 there was "the Reader," which did 
not long survive an article in which Mr. F. J. Furnivall 
attacked Dr. Johnson's Preface to his Dictionary under 
the belief that it was just written by a modern editor. 
In 1869 Dr. Charles Appleton, a man of fine accomplish- 
ments and earnest character, whose early death in 
1879 was regretted throughout England, established a 
weekly literary journal called "the Academy," in which 
the writers were to sign their papers. The aim of 
the projector was a pure and high one, there was no 
thought in his mind of business rivalry or journal- 
founding as a money speculation; he had earnest 
friends to help him, and the direct sincerity of pur- 
pose gave an impulse to his paper, which he named 



LN llli, KKiGiN UF VICTORIA. 249 

"the Academy," that has retained force until the pre- 
sent day. 

John Wilson Croker, born in Galway in 1780, was 
educated at Trinity College Dublin and called to the 
bar in 1807. He became Secretary to the Admiralty, 
an active politician, and a frequent writer in the 
" Quarterly Review." He was made a Privy Councillor 
in 1828. His chief contribution to Literature was an 
edition, published in 1831, of Boswell's "Life of 
Johnson." Within the reign of Victoria he edited in 
1848 Lord Hervey's Memoirs; published in 1853 a 
"History of the Guillotine," reprinted from "the Quar- 
terly Review" of 1844; and, at the close of his life, 
published reprints from "the Quarterly" of Essays on 
the French Revolution. He died in 1857. There may 
have been something of the feeling of a party writer 
on one side towards a party writer on the other side 
in Macaulay's condemnation of Croker's Boswell for 
bad scholarship, gross carelessness, bad English, and 
weak judgment; but the weak book certainly came to 
pieces in the strong man's hand. Of Croker's imper- 
fect understanding of Johnson himself, Macaulay said 
little, for his own insight into Johnson's character was 
much less deep than Carlyle's. An edition of Croker's 
Boswell was afterwards issued in which all discovered 
errors were corrected. 

Edward Jesse, the author of some pleasant books 
of popular natural history, was a clergyman's son, 
born in 1780. He obtained offices at courts, through 
the friendship of Lord Dartmouth, whom he had served 



250 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

li 



as private secretary. In 1830, when his offices were 
abolished, he obtained a pension. He published ini,i 
1 846 "Anecdotes of Dogs," and in the following year 
a book of "Favourite Haunts and Rural Studies." Hej 
also edited Izaak Walton's "Complete Angler" andj 
Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selborne." He 
died in 1868. His literary taste was inherited by his. 
son, John Heneage Jesse, born in 18 15, who became 
a Civil Servant in the Admiralty. He publishedn 
a poem at the age of sixteen on Mary Queen oft 
Scots, and dealt afterwards with history as a prose 
writer. He published in 1839 ^^^^ volumes of "Me- 
moirs of the Court of England during the Reign ofl 
the Stuarts;" in 1843 three volumes of "Memoirs ofi 
the Court of London from the Revolution in 1688 to] 
the Death of George II.;" in 1845 "Memoirs of the: 
Pretenders and their Adherents;" in 1847-50 four 
volumes of "Literary and Historical Memoirs of London 
and its Celebrities;" in 1861 "Richard IIL and his 
Contemporaries;" and in 1867 "Memoirs of the Life 
and Reign of George IIL" He died in July 1874.. 
The impulse to write passed also to the eldest daughter 
of Edward Jesse, Mrs, Houstoun, who wrote two books 
of travel, and several novels, "Recommended to Mercy," 
"Such Things Are, &c." 

There remains one man of the group of writers 
who were between fifty and sixty years old at the be- 
ginning of the reign, and he is representative of pure 
Science, Sir David Brewster, born at Jedburgh in 1781. 
He left Divinity for Science. In 18 15 he received 



IN THK RETGN OF VICTORIA. 25 L 

'rom the Royal Society the Copley Medal, and again 
n 18 18, for his discoveries in polarisation of light. 
le had been engaged at this time for some years, 
ind remained busy till 1830, on the production of a 
^Cyclopaedia, to which young Carlyle contributed, and 
le was working at the practical application of his 
.tudies of light to the improvement of lighthouses. 
ie received honorary degrees from Edinburgh, Aber- 
leen, Oxford and Cambridge; became Fellow of 
he Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh; re- 
:eived the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 

830; and was knighted in 1832. He was one of 
he founders of "the British Association for the Ad- 

ancement of Science," which held the first of its annual 
neetings in 1831; and he was at the same time fellow^- 
vorker with Brougham and others for the general ad- 
vancement of knowledge as the chief civilizing power, 
ile died in February 1868. His "Treatise on Optics" 
vas published in 1831. Within the present reign he 
Dublished, in 1841, a volume entitled "Martyrs of 
kience," and in 1854 "More Worlds than One." 
This was followed in 1855 by "Memoirs of Sir Isaac 
"^Tewton," to the study of whom he had been espe- 
:ially drawn by his own study of light. 



252 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 



II 



CHAPTER IX. 

MEN OF THE NEXT DECADE OF YEARS. 

When we watch the tide as it flows in, wave aftt 
wave goes back over its old ground. There seems t<| 
be as much retreating as advancing, and it is so hen 
with the tide of life as it draws nearer to the grouno 
on which we stand. With the writers born within th( 
next ten years, those who were between forty and fiftt 
at the beginning of the reign, we have another wav« 
advancing over time that has already once or twic( 
been covered. Forty-nine was the age of Sir Francis 
Palgrave, Sir William Hamilton and Theodore Hookl 
Forty eight was the age of Richard Harris Barham: 
author of the Ingoldsby Legends. Dr. Bosworth 
already spoken of, John Payne Collier and Bryar 
Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall) were forty-seven. Lord 
John Russell and Henry Hart Milman were forty-six 
Half a dozen writers were forty-five years old, Michael 
Faraday, Sir Roderick Murchison, John Keble, Sir 
Archibald Alison and Sir John Bowring, also Mrs. Somer- 
ville and Charles Knight, who have been included in! 
the record of distinct movements of thought. William 
Maginn, who wrote as Father Prout, was forty- four. 
Forty.-_three was the age of John Gibson Lockhart, of 
George Grote and of Thomas Arnold, whose son Mat- 



IN THE RETGN OF VICTORIA. 253 

thew Arnold was then a boy of fifteen. Thomas 
Carlyle was forty-two years old and two novelists were 
severally aged forty-one and forty, George Richard 
Gleig and Samuel Lover. Sir Charles Lyell was forty. 
When we have glanced at the work of these writers, 
leaving only Thomas Carlyle to be associated with the 
later generation, we shall have only to speak of writers 
who represent the literature with which we are in 
immediate contact, writers of whom the earliest born, 
if he had reached old age, would in the course of 
nature have been living now. Their fellowship of 
work joins, as the world needs, old and young, the 
caution of experience and the courage of hope, in 
labour that, each in his own way, their living readers 
share. 

Reaction from the literature of gloom and tears 
and strained emotion, quickened the public readiness 
for jest. The healthy English character has a quick 
sense of fun. In the days of the stiff French critical 
influence, fun had been dismissed as vulgar. When 
the reaction against formalism set in, there was a 
gush of emotion, an intensity of diverse speculation, 
that, doubtless, was cause of good mirth in the way 
of ridicule, but in itself was often as oppressive as 
the superseded formalism. With the reaction against 
this kind of excess came first an increased demand 
for jokes, by way of change. Life had not come to 
be more frivolous, but its frivolity had come to be 
more open. And presently afterwards, since reaction 
is always from one extreme to its opposite, there 



254 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

came over society a fashion, or as Ben Jonsor 

Poetaster would have called it, a humour, for tl 

cynical air of one who would seem to have no ze, 

about anything. That, being as insincere as the fali 

sentiment, was a form of stupidity which could hard:i 

pass for an improvement even upon the frank rudil 

ness of practical jesting. ' 

Theodore Hook was good for nothing if he w£ 

not funny, and his fun was that of buoyant spirit 

weighted with no wisdom. He was born in 178c 

and died in 1841. His father was a musical com 

poser, a brother of his became Dean of Worcestei 

He wrote for the theatres, and acquired high sociaj 

reputation as a table companion. He could keep up 

a running fire of jokes, or pour out, at will, a string o| 

rhymes that introduced playful allusions to even 

member of the company he might be in; could sit as 

the piano and cleverly expand a verbal joke agains; 

somebody present into a burlesque opera, and pass oi.: 

to practical jokes in the small hours of the morningj 

He held an office in the Mauritius from 18 13 to i8i8i| 

His deputy there embezzled ^12,000 of public moneyl 

for which Hook was responsible. Then came somJ 

little experience of imprisonment for debt; then fol-j* 

lowed journalism, and novel writing. When the "Johri^ 

Bull" was set up to advocate Tory policy, in 1821, * 

Theodore Hook was its guiding spirit, and by fun 

and audacity, with little or no restraint of good taste, 

he made his party warfare pleasant to the public of 

that day. He began to write stories in 1824, wit 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 255 

"Sayings and Doings." His best novels are "Jack 
Brag" and "Gilbert Gurney" (1836-37). He was edit- 
ing "the New Monthly Magazine" at the beginning of 
the present reign. 

Theodore Hook's life was written and published in 
1848 by his friend Richard Harris Barham, who wrote 
in playful irregular rhyme, under the name of Thomas 
Ingoldsby, "the Ingoldsby Legends." Barham was born 
at Canterbury in 1789, and died in June 1845. When 
five or six years old he inherited the estate and 
manor house of Sappington. When a boy at St. Paul's 
school he was upset in the Dover mail, and had his 
right arm shattered, so that it was crippled for life. 
In later years he was thrown from a gig and had a 
leg broken. Another time he damaged one of his 
eyes. After graduating at Oxford he took orders, 
and became a minor canon of St. Paul's and rector of 
St. Augustine and St. Faith's in the City of London. 
He wrote in "Blackwood's Magazine," in the "Edin- 
burgh Review," and other journals, and contributed to 
a Biographical Dictionary. In January 1837 Richard 
Bentley published the first number of "Bentley's 
Miscellany" with Charles Dickens, in the first flush of 
his fame, writing "Oliver Twist" in it, and a strong 
company of lively writers to support him. Barham 
was among their number, and his contributions of a 
series of burlesque legends in free and lively rhyme 
were first colfected into a volume as "the Ingoldsby 
Legends" in 1840. The quick play of fancy, the odd 
turns of rhyme, the capital illustrations by George 



256 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Cruikshank to which they were wedded, and the whole- 
some spirit of good humour that runs though all, have 
made "the Ingoldsby Legends" a book about whicl\ 
readers have not ceased to care. Richard Barhani 
published also a novel in 1841 "My Cousin Nicholas/' 
which had been contributed in sections to "Bentley's 
Miscellany." 

William Maginn, — Dr. Maginn, — was born at Cork in 
1793 and died in 1842. He was educated at Trinity 
College, Dublin, and turned to account good scholar- 
ship in ancient and modern languages in his lively 
work as a journalist who had a hearty relish for true I 
literature and fought stoutly for Church and State, t 
He was one of the vigorous band of writers for j 
"Eraser's Magazine" in the days when its publisher I 
dared to print Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." Maginn's 
series of papers contributed to "Fraser" in 1834 ^s 
the "Reliques of Father Prout, late RR of Watergrass- 
hill in the County of Cork, Ireland," illustrated with 
etchings by young Maclise, were first collected into a 
book in 1836. A new edition of it, edited by a still 
surviving comrade, was published in i860 in "Bohn's 
Illustrated Library," with the etchings. It reproduced 
also the sketch by Maclise of Maginn addressing his 
fellow contributors after a dinner at 2 1 2 Regent Street, 
the sketch giving more than two dozen portraits of 
men of mark. Theodore Hook's face, coarsely good- 
humoured, is between Lockhart's, refined and calmly 
self-possessed, and Brewster's, thoughtful. Over the 
heads of Brewster and David Macbeth Moir, who, 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 257 

under the signature of "Delta," was especially known as 
the poet of Blackwood, rises the young head of Thomas 
Carlyle, with shaggy hair, hollow cheeks, and a kindly 
play of amusement about the mouth, for Maginn is 
speaking. Young Thackeray is on the other side of 
the table, drawing all his face into his eyeglass in the 
endeavour to see somebody. Ainsworth also is there 
as a serene and handsome youth. His profile is set 
as a foil by the full face of Coleridge, who, with great 
round eyes, suggests the meditative owl. In Maginn's 
"Reliques," the Watergrasshill Carousal has its own 
life, though its form was suggested by John Wilson's 
"Noctes Ambrosianse." The poet's love of nature that 
inspires many a fine passage in the "Noctes" is re- 
placed in the "Reliques of Father Prout" by a skill in 
comic rhymes, kindred to those of "Thomas Ingoldsby," 
and by a knack at turning verse out of one language 
into another, in which Dr. Maginn had no equal. One 
of his papers on "The Rogueries of Tom Moore" is 
said to have, for a time, afflicted Moore himself, who 
thought that he was really accused, or that the world 
might suppose him to be accused, of taking his songs 
out of the French and Latin. Of "Go where Glory 
waits thee" he was told that it was really written by 
the Comtesse de Chateaubriand, who was born in 
1 49 1, and that the original referred to the battle of 
Pavia; the "original" being Maginn's version of Moore's 
song into French. In "Lesbia hath a beaming eye," 
"Tommy" was accused of having stolen a piece from 

0/ English Literature. '7 



!Z$8 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the Latin, and the Latin was in like manner, given in 
evidence, 

Lesbia semper hinc et inde 

Oculorum tela movit; 
Captat omnes, sed deinde 

Quis ametur nemo novit; 

and so to the end. 

Samuel Lover, a lively writer of Irish stories, was 
born in Dublin in 1797, son of a stockbroker. He 
began life as a miniature painter and, in 1828, be- 
came a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, of 
which he afterwards was secretary. While succeeding 
as a portrait painter, he wrote in a magazine a series 
of "Legends and Stories illustrative of Irish Character," 
published in 1832. This was followed in 1833 by 
"Popular Tales and Legends of the Irish Peasantry," 
and in 1834 ^7 ^ second series of "Legends and 
Stories of Ireland." At the beginning of the reign of 
Victoria, Samuel Lover came to London and gradually 
gave up the pencil for the pen. He wrote for maga- 
zines, produced a series of Irish songs which were set 
to music by himself and of which some, as "Rory 
O'More" and "Molly Bawn" were very popular. They 
formed, in 1839, ^ volume of "Songs and Ballads." 
To successive numbers of "Bentley's Miscellany" 
Samuel Lover contributed, in 1842-3, a novel called 
"Handy Andy," having Irish blunders for its matter 
of amusement. He wrote also musical dramas, as 
"Rory O'More" and "the White Horse of the Peppers," 
and in the latter part of his life followed the example 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 259 

of Albert Smith in setting up a popular entertainment. 
Albert Smith, a clever writer of gay trifles, achieved very- 
great success as a comic showman of Mont Blanc in 
Piccadilly. Samuel Lover, also depending wholly on 
himself, gave "Irish Evenings" enlivened with songs 
and music of his own. In 1848 he carried his "Irish 
Evenings" to America, and made on his return a 
new entertainment out of his adventures there. He 
obtained a small civil-list pension towards the close of 
his life, and died in July 1868. 

Thomas Crofton Croker, who was a year younger 
than Samuel Lover and died in 1854, was another 
illustrator of Irish song and story. He was born in 
Cork, and was at first put into a counting house, but 
he had artistic skill, was clever with the pencil, though 
he did not, like Lover, become painter by profession, 
and he had literary tastes that fastened upon legends 
and antiquities of Ireland. He obtained a clerkship 
in the Admiralty, which brought him to London. There 
he became known as a genial Irish antiquary. In 
1825 he published "Fairy Legends and Traditions of 
the South of Ireland," and in 1839 "^^e Popular Songs 
of Ireland, collected and edited with Introductions and 
Notes." He had planned he says "a series of songs, 
which would have told the history of Ireland from the 
battle of the Boyne to the present time, in a novel, 
impartial, and, according to my view, interesting and 
instructive form." But that would have extended to 
three or four volumes, and the publisher's faith in the 
public intelligence did not warrant more than one 

17* 



56o OF ENGLISH LITERATURE I 

volume of popular songs. Mr. Crofton Croker quotec 
in his preface an Irishman's view of the drawing-room ^ 
conventionality of Moore's Melodies. "It has ofter 
struck me with astonishment," said this critic, "tha 
the people of Ireland should have so tamely submittec 
to Mr. Thomas Moore's audacity in prefixing the titk 
of 'Irish' to his 'Melodies.' That the tunes are 
Irish, I admit; but as for the songs, they in genera', 
have as much to do with Ireland as with Nova Scotia; 
What an Irish affair, for example, 'Go where glory 
waits thee,' &c. Might it not have been sung by ai 
cheesemonger's daughter of High Holborn, when her 
master's apprentice was going, in a fit of valour, to 
list himself in the third Buffs, or by any other 
amatory person as well as a Hibernian Virgin? And 
if so, where is the Irishism of the thing at allr 
Again, 

* When in death I shall calmly recline, 

O bear my heart to my mistress dear; 
Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine ' — 

Tell her it lived upon fiddlesticks! pretty food for 
*an Irishman's heart for the ladies'! . . . Allusions! 
to our localities, it is true, we sometimes meet with, 
as thinly scattered as plums in the holiday puddings ol 
a Yorkshire boarding school, and scattered for the same 
reason — ^just to save appearances, and give a title to 
the assumed name. There's 'the Vale of Avoca,' for 
instance, a song upon a valley in Wicklow, but which 
would suit any other valley in the world, provided it 
had three syllables, and the middle one of due length." 



EST THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 26 1 

This critic would have found as much Irishism or more, 
in English George Colman's notion of an Irish song: 

"Crest of the O'Shaughnashane! 

That's a potato plain, 
Long may your root every Irishman know! 

Pats long have stuck to it, 

Long bid good luck to it; 
Whack for O'Shaughnashane! Tooley whagg ho!" 

William Carleton, another Irish writer, was of the 
same age as Crofton Croker. He was born in 1798, 
the son of a small farmer at Clogher, county Tyrone. 
He was trained as a priest, but turned writer, and, 
in 1830, published "Traits and Stories of the Irish 
Peasantry." They were followed by a second series 
in 1832, at the time when Samuel Lover was producing 
his "Legends and Stories of Ireland." Such books at 
such a time aided the movement towards a quickening 
of general intelligence, by seeking to bring Englishmen 
and Irishmen nearer together. They helped thousands 
of readers to a kindly understanding of the Irish 
character. Carleton was afterwards an active writer of 
Irish tales. In 1841 he published "the Fawn of Spring 
Vale," "the Clarionet" and other Tales; in 1845 
"Valentine MCClutchy, the Irish Agent;" in 1847 "Art 
Maguire;" in 1852 "Red Hall," "the Squanders of Castle 
Squander," "Jane Sinclair" and other Tales; in 1855 
"Willy Reilly;" and "the Black Baronet" in 1858. 
William Carleton received a literary pension of ^^ 200, 
and after his death in January 1869, a pension of 
0^ 100 was granted to his widow. 



262 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

George Robert Gleig, the son of a Scotch bishop 
was born in 1796, educated at Glasgow and Oxford 
and intended for the church. Natural inclination dre^ 
him to a soldier's life. He entered the army in 18 12 
and was with the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula 
After other service with the army he returned to Oxford ' 
completed his studies, and in 1822 obtained a curac) 
from which he was advanced to the rectory of Ivy 
church in Kent. His experience in the Peninsul 
furnished matter for his first successful book, "Th 
Subaltern," in 1825. Besides published Sermons, ant 
a History of the Bible, in 1830, followed by a "Histor 
of the British Empire in India," he produced in 183 
a Life of Monro; in 1840 a Life of Warren Hastings 
in 1848 a Life of Clive; the Story of Waterloo in 184; 
and in 1858 an adaptation of Brialmont's Life of Wei 
lington. Among Mr. Gleig's popular books there hav 
been "Chelsea Pensioners" in 1829; "Allan Breck," 
novel, in 1834; "Chelsea Hospital" in 1837; "^^e Onl 
Daughter" in 1839. ^^ 1844 he was made Chaplai 
to Chelsea Hospital, and in 1846 Chaplain Gener? 
to the Forces. Having been appointed Inspectc 
General of Military Schools he established and editec 
in 1850, a series of School books. In 1851 aj 
peared his "Light Dragoon." In 1856 Mr. Glei 
edited a book on "Religion in the Ranks." Amon 
writers of the reign of Victoria, Mr. Gleig is the on 
who has done most to associate in the public min 
the nobler strain of life with the profession of 
soldier. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 263 

Of wars between France and England before 
Waterloo, Sir Archibald Alison gave, from his own 
strongly Tory point of view, an account in his "History 
of Europe from the Commencement of the French 
Revolution in 1789 to the Restoration of the Bourbons 
in 1 8 1 5." This work, which extended over ten volumes, 
was in course of publication at the beginning of the 
Reign of Victoria. It was completed in 1842. In 
1847-9 there was a seventh edition of it, in 20 volumes 
post 8vo., and between 1852 and 1859 i^s author pro- 
duced a continuation of the history from 18 15 to 1852, 
the continuation occupying eight more volumes. Sir 
Archibald published also in 1847 "The Military Life 
of John, Duke of Marlborough;" in 1850 three volumes 
of Essays, Political, Historical, and Miscellaneous, which 
first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, and, in 186 1, 
"Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Charles Stewart, 
Marquesses of Londonderry," in three volumes; besides 
other books. This voluminous writer was the son of a 
Rev. Archibald Alison, who died in 1839, ^^^ who had 
written in 18 12 what was in its day an admired "Essay 
on the Nature and Principles of Taste." Archibald 
the younger was born in 1792, and educated at 
Edinburgh for the Scottish bar, to which he was called 
in 1 8 1 4. He obtained official appointments, was elected 
Rector of Marischal College in 1845, and in 1851 ob- 
tained the like honour from the University of Glasgow. 
In 1852 he obtained a baronetcy, and in 1853 the 
honorary degree of D. C. L. from the University of 
Oxford. He died in May 1867. Alison, as a historian 



264 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

was one of the last of the school of writers who told 
a piece of history through, according to their bias of 
opinion, with some generalization, little or no original 
research, and superstitious belief in a way of writing 
that was once supposed to befit the dignity of the 
historian. His book covers one of the most important 
periods in human history, and has its use. His facts 
are arranged in a clear sequence, and fully set forth, 
although they are diffusely told by an interpreter with- 
out any conception of their meaning. 

Sir Francis Palgrave represents in his life's labour 
the advance towards a later school of historians , who 
lay stress upon the importance of a constant trial of 
asserted facts by search into the evidence on which 
they rest. He was born in 1788, of a rich Jewish 
family, and his name was Francis Cohen until the age 
of 35, when he married and took the maiden name 
of his wife's mother. He was acting then as a soli- 
citor, but four years after his marriage he was called 
to the bar, and practised chiefly before the House of 
Lords. In the year of his being called to the bar, 
1827, he published a work on Parliamentary Writs. 
In 1 83 1 he produced a valuable "History of England 
during the Anglo-Saxon Period," followed in 1832 by 
a "History of the Rise and Progress of the English 
Commonwealth during the Anglo-Saxon period." In 
.that year he was knighted. Between 1830 and 1837, 
Sur Francis Palgrave produced ten volumes of the 
publications of the Record Commission, and in the 
first year of the reign of Victoria, in 1838, he was ap- 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 265 

pointed Deputy Keeper of the Records. He published 
also in 1837 ^ picture of the Middle Ages with 
Marco Polo and Roger Bacon in the foreground as 
f'Truths and Fictions of the Middle Ages: The Mer- 
chant and the Friar." In 1851 Sir Francis Palgrave 
published the first of the four volumes of a "History 
of Normandy and England." The second volume fol- 
lowed in 1857. The third and fourth, completed from 
his papers after his death in July 1861, brought the 
history to the end -of the reign of William Rufus. 
This section was published in 1864. 

Two sons of Sir Francis Palgrave have distinguished 
themselves as wTiters. Francis Turner Palgrave, born 
in 1824, and educated at the Charterhouse and Baliol 
College, Oxford, was for five years Vice-Principal of 
a Training College for schoolmasters. He was after- 
wards for a few years private secretary to Lord Gran- 
ville and is now one of the three Assistant Secretaries 
of the Committee of Council on Education. Mr. 
F. T. Palgrave has proved himself a graceful poet and 
a refined critic. He published "Idylls and Songs" in 
1854, and has made two choice collections from the 
English poets, one called "The Golden Treasury of 
English Songs," published in 1861, the other a "Chil- 
dren's Treasury of Lyrical Poetry," published in 1877. 
In the same year, 1877, ^^ edited a selection from 
the poems of Herrick. He has also aided in the re- 
fining of the public taste for art; was editor of the 
Art Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1862, and 
published Essays on Art in 1866. 



266 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

William Gifford Palgrave, second son of Sir Franci 
born in 1826, and, like his brother, educated at tt 
Charterhouse and at Oxford, served for a short time i 
lieutenant in the Bombay Native Infantry. But 1: 
joined the Order of the Jesuits and became one of i 
missionaries in Syria and Palestine. In 1865 
published a very interesting "Narrative of a Year 
Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia" mac 
in 1862-63. The journey was one of exploration unde: 
taken for Napoleon III. Since the- explorer could speaj 
Arabic like a native, he travelled as a native, wit 
elaboration of disguise not only for the more safet 
but also as a way to secure closer observation. 

Returning to the men who were of like age wit; 
Sir Francis Palgrave, we find one of them, John Payd 
Collier, who is, in 1881, the patriarch of living Englis 
writers, drawing towards the close of his ninety-thir 
year. Born in January 1789, he was but a ye? 
younger than Byron, and three years older tha 
Shelley. His father was in the service of "the Times; 
newspaper and he began the world as a reporter, 
the same time securing a call to the bar in the Middl 
Temple. His interest in the old English dramatist 
was shown by his first work, "the Poetical Decameron, 
published in 1820. In 1825 he produced a new editioi 
of Dodsley's Old Plays with addition to their numbe 
and in 183 1 he published, in three volumes, a "Histor 
of Dramatic Poetry," in which he laid broader an 
deeper foundations for a study of the English Drami 
than had been laid by any man before him. He foun^ 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 267 

in the Duke of Devonshire a liberal friend. In 1835 
he founded, partly upon documents in the library of 
Lord Ellesmere, of which some have since been con- 
sidered forgeries, a record of "New Facts regarding 
the Life of Shakespeare." This was followed in 1836 
by "New Particulars" in a letter to Alexander Dyce, 
and "Further Particulars" in 1839. ^^ ^^i^ ^^^^ 
Mr. Collier began to produce little privately printed 
editions of rare tracts and poems, a very small number 
of copies of each, often not more than 25, being 
printed. In 1842 he produced his Library edition of 
the works of Shakespeare, its successive volumes com- 
ing before the public side by side with those of the 
Library edition by Charles Knight. A second revised 
edition of Mr. Collier's Shakespeare followed in 1858. 
This had to take account of the corrections in a 
volume that had become famous as "the Perkins 
Folio." In the spring of 1849 Mr. Collier bought, 
he said, from Mr. Rodd, a dealer in old books, for 
thirty shillings a copy of the second folio of Shake- 
speare (1632), which, when bought, was put upon an 
upper-shelf and neglected, until he discovered and, in 
May 1852, first published the fact, that this old folio 
abounded in marginal corrections, and that they were 
in a contemporary handwriting. The handwriting 
was supposed to be that of a Thomas Perkins, whose 
name was written in the volume, and whose correc- 
tions might have been based upon actual knowledge 
of the text. The "Corrected Folio," as it is now 
termed, became a subject of warm controversy. It 



268 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

was then placed on view, in 1859, i^ ^^^ ^S- depart- 
ment of the British Museum, where any student might 
examine it for himself. When first spoken of, it had 
been shown at the Society of Antiquaries; but when 
the volume, having fallen into suspicion, was exposed 
to closer scrutiny, it lost authority. It was evident 
that the old writing had been carefully imitated over 
pencillings of the words to be engrossed, the pen- 
cillings being in a modern running hand which was 
here and there to be seen under the ink. There was 
nothing left to be said or thought about the Perkins 
folio by any temperate student but to warn others of 
its worthlessness and regret that Mr. Collier should 
have been again misled. Whose time was wasted on 
the manufacture of the notes we do not want to know. 
When Englishmen had in their own Literature an 
unknown world to explore, John Payne Collier was 
one of the few who led the first bands of the pioneers. 
Much of what younger men repeat by rote, it was he 
who found. He taught it to their grandfathers and 
fathers. He has done his part towards bringing many 
out of darkness into light, and for the stumble here 
and there, who is it that never stumbles? In 1880 
Mr. Collier produced in three substantial volumes a 
second edition of his "History of Dramatic Poetry," 
embodying all notes of correction and addition that 
he had made during the interval of nearly half a cen- 
tury since the first issue of the book. 

If we turn now to the Literature of Science we 
find within this group of the men born in the same 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 26g 

decade Sir Roderick Murchison and Sir Charles Lyell, 
the two foremost geologists of their time. Roderick 
Impey Murchison was born in Rossshire, the son of 
Kenneth Murchison of Tarradale, in 1792. He was 
educated for the army, and saw service in the Pen- 
insular war, as an officer in the 36th Foot, in 1808-9. 
He was afterwards on the staff of his uncle. General 
Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and then Captain in the 
6th Dragoons. He left the army in 18 14, married in 
18 1 5, hunted, travelled, and began his active studies 
of geology. In 1825 he was elected Fellow of the 
Geological Society. In 1827 he studied the older 
strata in the Highlands with Professor Sedgwick, and 
began a course of investigation which he continued 
systematically in England and Wales after 1831. This 
led to his use in 1835 of the term "Silurian," to cha- 
racterize a great natural system of ancient deposits 
which had not before been classified, and the type of 
which was found in Siluria, or the country of Caracta- 
cus and the old Britons known as the Silures. Murchison 
completed in 1838, and published in 1839, ^^ ^^^ ^^" 
ginning of the reign of Victoria, his great work on 
"the Silurian System," dedicated to his fellow labourer 
Professor Adam Sedgwick. Sedgwick, who was about 
six years older then Murchison, held for more than 
fifty years the chair of Geology founded at Cambridge 
by Dr. John Woodward. Sedgwick lived to the age 
of 87, dying in January 1873; Murchison lived to the 
age of 79, dying in October 187 1. Murchison's re- 
searches as a geologist extended over many parts of 



270 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Europe. He directed a geological Survey of Russia 
for the Czar Nicholas, and published, in 1845, the> 
"Geology of Russia and the Ural Mountains." At this 
time he first pointed out that gold would be discovered 
in Australia, and he urged government action three 
years before the gold was actually found. In 1854 ^^ 
published "Siluria. A History of the Oldest Rocks < 
in the British Isles and other Countries." The fourth 
edition of this book, produced in 1867, included "the 
Silurian System" and much new matter. It was the 
final definition of the chief work of its author's life.. 
He was knighted after his return from Russia; he suc- 
ceeded Sir Henry De La Beche in 1855 as Director 
General of the Geological Survey of the British Isles; ji 
in 1863 he was made Knight Commander of the Bath,, 
and in 1866 a baronet. Four years after his death i* 
there appeared a Memoir of his life and labours, with 1: 
a sketch of the rise and progress of Palaeozoic Geology - 
in Britain, by Dr. Archibald Geikie, who then was and ! 
still is Murchison Professor of Geology and Mineralogy ! 
in the University of Edinburgh. ' 

Charles Lyell, five years younger than Murchison, , 
and also a Scot, was born in Forfarshire in 1797, 
eldest son of a botanist who lived at Kinnordy. He 
was educated in Sussex, at the Midhurst Grammar 
School, and afterwards at Oxford, where he took his 
M. A. degree in 1821. He was called to the bar, 
but, having private means, applied himself to the 
study of Geology, to which he had been drawn by 
the lectures of William Buckland, then reader in 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 27 I 

Mineralogy and Geology at Oxford, and afterwards 
Dean of Westminster, in which office he died aged 72, 
in 1856. In 1830, 1832 and 1833 Lyell first published 
in three volumes his "Principles of Geology," a book 
of which eleven editions appeared in his life time, 
and which has done more than any single book to 
give impulse to the study of Geology, by tempering all 
its details with philosophic thought. In 1845 Lyell 
published geological investigations in the New World, 
in a book of "Travels in North America;" followed by 
a "Second Visit to the United States," in 1848. In 
that year he was knighted, and he was created a 
baronet in 1864. When Mr. Charles Darwin's "Origin 
of Species" appeared, Lyell, himself apt at scientific 
generalization, gave close attention to its reasoning, and 
produced in 1863, as the result of his study, a book 
proving "The Antiquity of Man." He died in 1873. 

The decade produced not only these foremost 
geologists, but also a great chemist in Michael Faraday, 
who was born in 1791 and died in 1867 at the age 
of 76. He was the son of a Yorkshire blacksmith 
who had settled in London. After some elementary 
education Faraday was apprenticed, at thirteen, to a 
bookseller and bookbinder. He had great natural 
genius, of which the bent was towards the form of 
science in which he afterwards excelled. As a boy 
he made experiments and he sought books to aid him. 
When he was twenty-one be attended lectures given 
by Sir Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution, sent 
Davy his notes, and sought his aid to an escape fron^ 



272 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

trade. Sir Humphrey Davy became interested in hin 
and made him, in 18 13, an assistant in the laborator 
of the Royal Institution. Five years later Faradai 
began to show results of work. In 1824 he marriec 
In 1825 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Societjl 
In 1827 he published a treatise on "Chemical Man 
pulation." In 1830 he began to contribute to th 
Royal Society accounts of his discoveries in magnetisr 
and electricity. He had then been appointed Lecture 
on Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy Woolwich 
In 1830 Charles Babbage, a famous mathematician 
who was born in the same year as Faraday and diec 
in 1 87 1, published "Reflections on the Decline o- 
Science in England." In 1831 Faraday edited "a For 
eigner on the alleged Decline of Science." In 1832. 
and again in 1838, the Copley Medal of the Roya 
Society was awarded to him for his discoveries. 
1833 he became Professor of Chemistry to the Roya 
Institution with which he had been, and was after^ 
wards, associated during his whole scientific life. 
1835 his services obtained from the state a pensior 
of ^300 a year. A volume of his "Experimenta" 
Researches" was published in 1839; ^ second in 1844 
a third in 1855; a fourth in 1859. -^^ 1858 the 
Queen allotted to him rooms at Hampton Court, 
Honours were showered upon him, but he retained 
throughout life the simplicity of the true student oi 
nature. He was deeply but unaffectedly religious,! 
with an open kindliness, and childlike in his freedom 
from the outward crust that forms on most of us by 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 273 

contact with the world. One of the most refined plea- 
sures in London was to hear Faraday at the Royal 
Institution giving Christmas lectures to an audience of 
children. The last of such courses published was on 
"the Chemical History of a Candle," in 1861, the year 
in which decline of strength caused him to resign his 
office at the Royal Institution. 

Science applied to Philosophy and History is re- 
presented in the group of writers who were between 
forty and fifty years old at the beginning of the reign, 
by Sir William Hamilton and George Grote. James 
Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, was an older man, 
who died a year before the reign began. 

Sir William Hamilton, born at Glasgow in 1788, 
and educated at the Universities of Glasgow and Ox- 
ford, was called to the Scottish bar at the age of twenty- 
five. At the age of thirty three he became Professor 
of Universal History in the University of Edinburgh. 
His unsuccessful contest with John Wilson for the 
chair of Moral Philosophy has already been men- 
tioned. In July 1836, at the age of forty eight, he 
was elected at Edinburgh to the chair of Logic and 
Metaphysics, for which he was peculiarly qualified, 
and his fame then began to spread through Europe. 
He became the head of a distinct school of Philo- 
sophy. He had distinguished himself by contributions 
to "the Edinburgh Review" of philosophical articles 
on Cousin's Philosophy, in 1829; on Perception in 
1830; on Logic in 1833. The first course of lectures 
given by him in the Edinburgh University were on 

0/ English Literature. lo 



'274 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Metaphysics; each lecture being usually written on the 
evening and night before its delivery. In that way, 
a course of three lectures a week extending over five 
months, was produced. In the next session, 1837-8, 
a course of Logic was given, and most of the Lectures 
were produced in the same way. These courses of 
lectures, each occupying two volumes, were published 
after Sir William Hamilton's death edited by the Rev. 
Henry Longueville Mansel of Oxford and Dr. John 
Veitch, Professor of Logic at Glasgow. The lectures on I 
Metaphysics were published in 1859, ^^^ those on Logic 
in i860. The greater number of the footnotes which 
appeared in Sir William Hamilton's edition, published | 
in 1847, of the Works of Thomas Reid were written 
at the time when he was first delivering his lectures. 
There appeared also between 1854 and i860 an 
edition by him in eleven volumes of the Works of 
Dugald Stewart. Sir William Hamilton continued to 
lecture until his death in 1856. "For twenty years," 
say the editors of his lectures, — "from 1836 to 1856 — 
the Courses of Logic and Metaphysics were the means 
through which Sir William Hamilton sought to dis- 
cipline, and imbue with his philosophical opinions, 
the numerous youth who gathered from Scotland and 
other countries to his classroom; and while by these 
prelections the author supplemented, developed and 
moulded the Rational Philosophy, — leaving thereon 
the ineffaceable impress of his genius and learning — 
he, at the same time and by the same means, exer- 
cised over the intellects and feelings of his pupils 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 275 

an influence which, for depth, intensity, and elevation, 
was certainly never surpassed by that of any philo- 
sophical instructor. Among his pupils there are not 
a few who, having lived for a season under the con- 
straining power of his intellect, and been led to reflect 
on those great questions regarding the character, 
origin, and bounds of human knowledge, which his 
teachings stirred and quickened, bear the memory of 
their beloved and revered instructor inseparably 
blended with what is highest in their present intel- 
lectual life, as well as in their practical aims and 
aspirations." Sir William Hamilton's essays, chiefly 
from the Edinburgh Review, were published in 1852 
as "Discussions on Philosophy," and from these the 
majority of educated readers derive their impressions 
of his teaching. His philosophical system was that of 
a Natural Realist. He taught that every fact in 
philosophy is derived from direct consciousness. Philo- 
sophy is only a scientific development of the facts 
which consciousness reveals. The endless diversities 
among philosophers are due, he said, to their disposi- 
tion to appeal then only to consciousness when they 
can quote it in support of preconceived opinions. 
Naturally taken, it is an unerring criterion. But philo- 
sophers have seldom or never taken the facts of con- 
sciousness, the whole facts of consciousness, and no- 
thing but the facts of consciousness. They have either 
overlooked, or rejected, or interpolated. No fact is to 
be taken as a fact of consciousness that is not 
ultimate and simple. The whole fact is to be taken 

18* 



276 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

without reserve, and nothing but the fact. Inferences 
of reasoning are to be regarded as subordinate de- 
ductions, and rejected when they contradict the facts. 
In consciousness, he also taught, there is a Duality, 
the self and the outer world, the ego and the non- 
ego, known together and known in contrast to each 
other; mind and matter, not only given together but' 
in absolute coequality. The one does not precede, the 
other does not follow; and, in their mutual relation, 
each is equally dependent, equally independent. 
Those who accept this fact in its integrity. Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton called Natural Realists, or Natural 
Dualists. But he said that nearly all modern philo- 
sophers held other views. 

George Grote was at once philosopher and historian. 
His grandfather was a merchant, Andreas Grote, who 
came over from Bremen in the middle of the last 
century, and, in addition to a prosperous business house' 
. in Leadenhall Street, established in 1766, with George; 
Prescott, the banking house of Grote Prescott and Co.! 
in Threadneedle Street. The eldest son of Andreas^ 
Grote by a second marriage was George Grote, the 
father of the historian. George Grote, the historian,' 
was born in November 1794. He had four years of I 
education at a school in Sevenoaks, and six at the 
Charter house, before his father put him, at the age 
of sixteen, into the business of the bank. He studied 
with energy in leisure hours, was up at six in the 
morning to read philosophy for three hours before 
breakfast. He had come into relation with James 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 277 

Mill, who not only strengthened his devotion to study, 
but also exercised strong influence over his opinions. 
Grote married in 1820 and began housekeeping next 
door to the bank in Threadneedle Street. James Mill 
dined with him there at least once a week, and a 
band of earnest intellectual workers gathered about 
him. There were meetings on two mornings a week 
at half past eight for study of philosophy. As early as 
1823, he formed the design of writing a History of 
Greece and began to collect notes for it. In the fol- 
lowing years, he was among those workers for advance 
of unrestricted education who gave the most effectual 
aid to the founding of the University of London. In 
1830 George Grote's father died. He then inherited 
the family estate in Lincolnshire and became head of 
the banking house. To the business of the bank he 
gave strictest attention, while the critical condition of 
public affairs interested him deeply, and the "History 
of Greece" grew under his hand. In 1832 his interest 
in Parliamentary Reform, Vote by Ballot, Repeal of 
the Corn Laws and of Taxes on Knowledge, Extension 
of Education, and other great questions of the day, 
caused him to offer himself as candidate at the elections, 
and he was placed, in December, at the head of the poll 
in the election of members for the City of London. He 
then removed his home from Threadneedle Street. In 
1835 he was reelected to Parliament, where he was 
among the chiefs of the philosophical Radical section, 
and moved annually for vote by Ballot. At the new 
Election after the accession of Victoria, he was elected 



278 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

again, by a small majority against the strongest Tory 
opposition. After the dissolution in 1841 he withdrew 
from parliamentary life, and in March 1846 he pro- 
duced the first two volumes of his "History of Greece," 
of which the twelve volumes appeared during the 
course of the ten years from 1846 to 1856. George 
Grote continued his Greek studies and, blending withi 
them his studies of philosophy, planned large works- 
upon Plato and Aristotle. In i860 he published anr 
Essay upon Plato's Doctrine of the Revolution of thejj 
Earth, and in 1865 appeared in three large volumes- 
his study of "Plato, and other Companions of Socrates." 
The book abounds in acute analogies, is philosophical, | 
but, considering the subject, drily so. The old discipline 
of James Mill had weakened in Grote some of the 
faculties required for apprehension of the spiritual I 
side of Plato. He published in 1868 "a Review of! 
John Stuart MilPs Examination of Sir William Hamil- 
ton's Philosophy," and was preparing his work on 
Aristotle when he died in 187 1. The fragment ofi 
his Aristotle was edited after his death by his friends 
Professor Alexander Bain and Professor George Groom 
Robertson, and published in 1872. George Grote was 
successor to Lord Brougham as President of University 
College, and Vice Chancellor of the University of 
London. The chief English historian of Greece, the j 
acute critic of Plato, had taken his place among the 
foremost scholars of the age, by aptitude of mind and ' 
resolute self-education in hours stolen from rest, with- 
out help of training at a University, and with the| 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 279 

hindrances of a commercial life about him. In per- 
sonal character and manner Grote was, in his latter 
years, the type of the best form of oldfashioned 
courtesy; its kindly dignity was graced by a sincerity 
that could be felt in every act and word. To the 
College over which he had presided he bequeathed 
endowment for a chair of Logic and Mental Phi- 
losophy, but on condition that it should be held only 
by a layman. 

John Bowring, born at Exeter in 1792, was another 
of the young friends of James Mill. He was especially 
a friend and follower of Jeremy Bentham, of whom 
James Mill was the leading disciple. When Bentham 
died, in 1832, John Bowring was his literary executor. 
In 1823 Jeremy Bentham resolved to establish at his 
own cost a journal that should make head against the 
Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews by vigorous expres- 
sion of the opinions of that body of thinkers who were 
becoming known as philosophical Radicals. James Mill 
was asked to edit it; but he declined the office as 
incompatible with his appointment in the India House. 
John Bowring, then a merchant in the city, and for the 
last two or three years a devoted follower of Bentham' s, 
undertook to be editor. While the first number was 
being prepared, partnership was established with a 
writer, Henry Southern, who was at the same time pre- 
paring a literary Review, to be published by Longman. 
The two projects became one, and "the Westminster 
Review" was started under the two editors; John Bowring 
taking the political. Southern the literary department. 



28o OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

In the first number a declaration of faith was written 
by James Mill, in the form of an analysis of the British 
Constitution from the Radical point of view. He argued 
that the two great parties in the state represented con- 
flicts of opinion between two sections of the governing 
body, and that such conflicts involved no essential 
sacrifice of the aristocratical predominance. He illus- 
trated this by the conduct of the Whig party as ex- 
pressed by its organ "the Edinburgh Review," from 
which he quoted freely in support of his assertion that 
it coquetted with popular principles, and took care 
never to push home any argument that touched the 
power or interest of the governing classes. Because of 
this article, planned as the Radical's definition of the 
broad line by which he was separated from the Whig, 
Longman, as publisher of "the Edinburgh," refused 
to bring out "the Westminster." James Mill then went 
to his own publisher, by whom the first number of "the 
Westminster Review" was issued in April 1824. A 
subsequent article, levelled against "the Quarterly 
Review," defined the line of separation between fol- 
lowers of Bentham and the Tories. 

Mr. Bowring, while editing "the Westminster Re- 
view," still continued to distinguish himself by metrical 
translations from languages unknown to the greater 
number of his readers. In 182 1-3 he began with two 
volumes of "Specimens of Russian Poetry," in 1824 fol- 
lowed "Batavian Anthology," and immediately afterwards 
"Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain;" in 1827 he 
published "Specimens of Polish Poets," in 1830 "Poetry 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 261 

of the Magyars;" in 1832 "Bohemian and Cheskian 
Anthology." In the reign of Victoria his characteristic 
labour was to produce an edition, in eleven volumes, 
published in 1838-41, of the works of Jeremy Bentham. 
Mr. Bowring was in Parliament, except a four years' 
interval, from 1835 to 1849. ^^ 1^49 ^^ became 
British Consul at Hong Kong, and Superintendent of 
Trade in China. He was knighted after his return, in 
1853, and sent out again as Governor. He held also 
other diplomatic offices before his death in 1872 at 
the age of 80. In 1859 ^^^ published a book on "the 
Kingdom and People of Siam." In 1866 he went back 
to his old work and published translations from the 
Hungarian poet Alexander Petofi, a lover of freedom 
whose first songs appeared in 1843, who was accepted 
by the Hungarians as a national poet, and in the con- 
test against Austria and Russia went into the battle of 
Schassburg in July 1849. He was then only twenty- 
six years old. After the battle Petofi was not to be 
found either among the survivers or among the dead. 
A song writer belongs also to the group of English 
authors upon whom we are now dwelling, although the 
times happily did not call upon him for war songs. 
Bryan Waller Procter was born in 1790. He was edu- 
cated at Harrow, and made law his profession. In 
the years 1819-2 1 he acquired high reputation as a poet. 
In 1 8 19 he published "Dramatic Scenes and other 
Poems;" in 1820 "A Sicilian Story" and "Marcian 
Colonna." In January 1821 a tragedy by him, "Miran- 
dola," was produced at Covent Garden, with Charles 



29>2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 



I 



Kemble and Macready in its chief parts. The second 
act had been first written, then the first, and the end 
was known; but while the poet was considering how 
to fill up the third and fourth with detail, his friend' 
Macready sketched for him his notion of dramatic in- 
cident. This Procter had to accept and work out, subject 
to criticism and alteration. "Mirandola" filled the! 
house for nine nights and ran another seven, during; 
which the public seceded to the other house to heari 
the singing of a lady who had been praised by 
George IV. The published play ran quickly through i 
three editions. In 1822 Barry Cornwall maintained! 
credit as a poet with "the Flood of Thessaly," and hisj 
Poetical Works were collected. His age then was! 
thirty- two. In 1824 he married, worked at law tO! 
support his family, was called to the bar, and after- 
wards was appointed a Commissioner in Lunacy. He 
held that office until 1861 and died in October 1874. 
Bryan Waller Procter used as author a name — Barry 
Cornwall — formed by anagram from his own, without 
the second syllable of Waller and the P. of his surname. 
The volume of "English Songs," by which he is most 
commonly known, was first published in 1832. A plea- 
sant little pocket edition of them was published in 185 1, 
with pieces added, of which some then appeared for 
the first time. In the same year he published also 
"Essays and Tales in Prose." There was a new edition 
also of his Poetical Works in 1853. Procter's last 
work, published in 1866, when he was seventy six 
years old, was a "Memoir of Charles Lamb," whom 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 283 

he had known in his youth. It was a short memoir 
written for the purpose of showing that Charles Lamb's 
life answered to the condhion expressed by MiUon when 
he said, "I was confirmed in this opinion that he who 
would not be frustrate of his hope to write well here- 
after in laudable things, ought himself to be a true 
poem." "^ 

One of the daughters of Barry Cornwall, Adelaide 
Anne Procter, who was born in 1824 and died in 
1864, has obtained a place among English poetesses. 
She published in 1858 "Legends and Lyrics, a Book 
of Verses," some of which had appeared in Charles 
Dickens's "Household Words." There was a second 
volume of "Legends and Lyrics" published in 1862, 
two years before their author's death; and after her 
death the "Legends and Lyrics" were published in 
1868 with a memoir by Charles Dickens of her short 
life of earnest thought and feeling. 

Another poet in our group of men who were be- 
tween forty and fifty years old at the accession of 
Victoria was Henry Hart Milman; and he, like Procter, 
began with success as a poet on the stage. He was 
born in February 1791, the youngest son of a baronet 
who was physician to George IIL He was educated 
at Eton and Oxford. Li 18 12 he obtained at Oxford 
the Newdigate prize for an English poem, his subject 
being "the Apollo Belvidere." In 1815 he obtained 
a Fellowship at his College, Brasenose, and also 

* Charles Lamb's "Essays of Elia" are in the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 



284 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

published a play, called "Fazio." In 181 7 he was 
appointed Vicar of St. Mary's Reading. In 18 18 he 
published a religious poem in twelve books, "Samor, 
Lord of the Bright City." In 1820 he returned to 
dramatic poetry, and published "the Fall of Jerusa- 
lem," a play interspersed with lyric passages, and not 
meant for the stage. Its poetical view of the accom- 
plishment of prophecy and of the great features of the 
Jewish nationality suggests a fitness in the sequence 
when the writer who sang as a young poet "the Fall 
of Jerusalem ," told in after years "the History of the 
Jews." In 1 82 1 Milman was made Professor of Poetry 
in the University of Oxford, aud in that character he 
published in 1822 two new dramatic poems, "the 
Martyr of Antioch" and "Belshazzar." When Milman 
went to Reading, some of his congregation were exer- 
cised in mind by hearing that their new Vicar had 
written a stage play. From their point of view "the 
Fall of Jerusalem" had two merits, for its preface told 
them, that it was not for the stage, and that it set 
forth the fulfilment of prophecy. But there was set 
forth in it also human cause for the decline and fall 
of men and nations; and the strength by which a 
mind true to itself can stand, was the poet's theme in 
"the Martyr of Antioch." The martyrologists, said 
Milman, dwelt almost exclusively on the outward and 
bodily sufferings of the early Christians; but he shaped 
in his play a tale of the triumph over inward suffering; 
surrender of life and the world where the world's 
wealth and happiness were in the sufferer's power, 



IM THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 285 

severing of ties that Christianity endeared the more, 
a self-denial of the innocent affections; "it was from 
such trials," said the poet, "not those of the fire and 
the stake alone, that the meek religion of Christ came 
out triumphant." The last of Milman's plays was 
"Anne Boleyn," in 1826. It was in 1829 that he 
first published his "History of the Jews," and showed 
in it a liberal scholarship that gave alarm to many 
who had been taught to put away their reason when 
they read the Bible. There was nothing in Milman's life 
or writing that did not, in the eyes of educated 
churchmen, harmonize with the best spirit and the 
true aims of the Church he served; nor did he re- 
main long subject to misapprehension. At the be- 
ginning of the reign of Victoria Milman had left 
Reading, and had been in London for two years as 
Canon of Westminster and Rector of St. Margaret's. 
In 1838-39 he published an edition of Gibbon's 
History, with notes. This was followed in 1840 by 
his own "History of Christianity from the Birth of 
Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman 
Empire," in three volumes. In 1849 ^^ was made 
Dean of St. Paul's, and took his degree of Doctor of 
Divinity. In 1854-55 appeared the six volumes of 
Dean Milman's "History of Latin Christianity, includ- 
ing that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V." 
This continued his preceding work. In 1867, the year 
before his death, there was a new and revised edition 
of each of these histories; that of Latin Christianity, 
being then the fourth, and extending to nine volumes. 



286 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

In 1865 Dean Milman returned to his first love for 
dramatic poetry, and published, daintily adorned withi 
little woodcuts from the antique, a translation oflj 
the "Agamemnon" of ^schylus and of the "Baccha- 
nals" of Euripides into English verse. He added I 
translations of a considerable number of choice frag- 
ments from the lyric and later poets of Greece. They 
had all been made when he was Poetry Professor at 
Oxford. Being required to give his lectures — which 
were on the History of Greek Poetry — in Latin, he 
felt that many of the students would not follow readily, 
and chose, therefore, to animate his work by interspers- 
ing his own English versions of passages selected for 
quotation. His Latin lectures he did not care to print, 
for Otfried MuUer's work had since been published 
and translated into English; but the translations from 
Greek poets he was not content to part with. He, 
therefore, in his ripe age, added what was necessary 
to transform copious selections from two Greek plays 
into complete translations of them, and gave the rest 
as it remained to him. This volume Milman published 
at the age of 75, and three years afterwards, in Sep- 
tember 1868, he died. 

The Church of England had another poet of about 
Milman's age in John Keble, a clergyman's son, born 
in 1792 at Fairford in Gloucestershire. Keble was 
educated by his father in his home until he went to 
Oxford, to his father's College, Corpus Christi. He 
became a Fellow of Oriel, and had high reputation in 
the University; was Tutor at Oriel for five years; 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 287 

served twice as Public Examiner, and once as Master 
of the Schools. But he gave up his University posi- 
tion to go home, after his mother's death, and help 
his father by doing the duty of two little curacies. 
At different times Keble had written, and still wrote, 
religious poems in which devotional and domestic 
feelings were associated with habitual reverence for 
ordinances of the Church. A poem had often been 
written on the occasion of some festival. Then came 
the suggestion that by adding more he might form a 
chain of devotional pieces extending over all occasions 
of church worship throughout the Christian year. 
Under the name of "the Christian Year" this volume 
of verse was first published in 1827. From that time 
to this, no new book of religious verse produced in 
England has been so widely diffused. Within twenty 
six years one hundred and eight thousand copies 
were sold in forty-three editions, and "The Christian 
Year" is still being reproduced in many forms from 
the cheap shilling edition to the luxurious and costly 
illustrated volume. The force of the book lies in its 
sincerity. Its music is the music of a well harmonized 
life; the devotion is real; the quiet sense of nature is 
real. There are no tricks of style, though there are 
no flashes of genius. Keble laid stress on the authority 
and customs of the Church, he was what in the 
language of party is called a High Churchman; but 
the true man, whichever his side and whatever his 
cause, belongs to all and is a help to all. In 1825, 
when a brother was able to take his place by the side 



288 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of the old father who lived to be ninety, John Kebh 
took a curacy at Hursley. In 1831, he was appointee 
as Milman had been appointed in 1821, to the Poetr^ 
Professorship at Oxford, an office tenable for fiv( 
years. In 1833 he was appointed to preach the Assiz( 
Sermon at St. Mary's. He then took for his themt 
"National Apostasy." Dr. Newman- looked upon thaj 
sermon as the starting point of the great movement a; 
Oxford, in which Newman himself had a chief part! 
for the revival of English religion by the restoration 
of the power of the Church, a movement very dif 
ferent in kind from that begun at Oxford by Weslej 
in the eighteenth century but not less earnest in its 
purpose, nor, perhaps, less powerful in its effects; 
Keble returned to his quiet curacy. He was advanced 
in 1835 fi'O™^ the curacy to the vicarage of Hursleyj 
and then married. He edited Hooker's Works, ano 
wrote five numbers of the "Tracts for the Times 'j 
that were speeding the new religious movement at 
the beginning of the reign of Victoria. He edited al| 
the beginning of the reign a "Library of the Fathers',' 
published Sermons at various times, in which he laid 
great stress upon Sacraments of the Church, and 
produced in 1847 a-nother volume of poems "Lyrai 
Innocentium." These poems dealt with doctrines 
of the Church in association with the lives of chil-1 
dren, whom he loved, though in his marriage he 
was childless. John Keble and his wife died in 
the same year 1866, the wife two months after the: 
husband. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 289 

Richard Whately, also a clergyman's son, who was 
at Oriel with Keble, but was five years older, became 
Fellow of Oriel in 1 8 1 1 . Like Keble, he remained at 
Oxford as a private tutor. His mind was vigorous 
and practical. In 1 8 1 9 he met the doubts of sceptics 
by an imitation of their style, applied to events still 
within living memory, in a pamphlet of "Historic Doubts 
relative to Napoleon." This was suggested, probably, 
by a pamphlet in which his tutor, Dr. Copleston (whose 
"Remains" he edited in 1854), had treated with pleasant 
irony the destructive method of some literary critics 
by applying it to Milton's "L' Allegro" and "II Penseroso." 
In 1825 Whately, who had married and gone to a 
living in which his wife's health suffered, became 
Principal of St. Alban's Hall, and took the degree of 
D. D. In 1827 he published "Elements of Logic"; 
and "Elements of Rhetoric," in 1828. From 1829 to 
1 83 1 he was Professor of Political Economy at Oxford. 
In 1 83 1 he was made Archbishop of Dublin, and that 
was his position at the beginning of the reign of 
Victoria. His influence, wherever he exerted it, was 
that of a shrewd, healthy, religious man, who battled 
against faction and intolerance, and sought to calm 
morbid excitement. He acted and spoke frankly and 
naturally, preached in a natural voice, and in his 
"Elements of Rhetoric" tried to persuade the clergy 
that the source of "clergyman's sore throat" was their 
not doing so. Two or three years after the Queen's 
accession he wrote to a friend, "I was at the Birth- 
day Drawing-room yesterday, with the Bishop and ad- 

0/ English Literature, 19 



290 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

dress. The Queen reads beautifully; I wish she 
would teach some of my clergy." In 1856 Whately 
edited Bacon's "Essays," with copious comments upon 
life which they suggested to him. In 1859 he edited, 
with annotations, Paley's "Evidences" and Paley's 
"Moral Philosophy." Whately died in 1863. 

Richard Whately was one of the eldest, Thomas 
Arnold one of the youngest of this group of workers. 
Arnold was born in 1795, and was the youngest son 
of a collector of customs at West Cowes. When he 
was six years old, his father died. After four years 
at a school in Warminster, he was sent, in 1807, at 
the age of twelve, to Winchester. In his sixteenth 
year, he won a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, 
Oxford. He obtained a Fellowship in 18 15; gained 
prizes in 1 8 1 5 and 1 8 1 7 for the two University Essays 
in Latin and English; delighted in studies of History; 
fastened on Thucydides, whom he afterwards edited; 
was earnest, ardent, lively as a boy. When he went to 
see Keble in his new curacy at Hursley, Keble wrote 
of him, "Tom Arnold ran down here like a good 
neighbour, and surveyed the premises and the neigh- 
bourhood presently after Christmas. How very un- 
altered he is, and how very comfortable and con- 
tented! He is one of the persons whom it does one 
good to think of when I am in a grumbling vein." In 
18 19 Arnold settled with his mother, aunt, and sister, 
as partner with a brother-in-law, who established a 
school at Laleham near Staines, and undertook the 
preparation of young men for the Universities. There 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 2gi 

rhomas Arnold spent nine happy years, after the first 
Df which he married. In 1827 the post of Head 
Master at Rugby was vacant. Arnold was the last to 
>end in his testimonials. In one of them, from Dr. 
Hawkins, there was the prediction that if Mr. Arnold 
tvere elected at Rugby he would change the face of 
education throughout all the public schools in England. 
Vir. Arnold was elected, and every public schoolboy 
low has reason to be grateful for the fact. He took 
priest's orders, entered on his office in August 1828, 
proceeded to his degree of D. D., and, as Dr. Arnold 
)f Rugby, took a place of his own in the story of the 
Nineteenth Century. He knew how to make religion 
I part of the citizenship of school, as he desired to 
5ee it become part of the citizenship of life. He 
aboured for years, and in the end successfully, against 
-hose weaknesses of boy life which in a public school 
nay shape themselves, for want of a wise guidance— 
md had shaped themselves — into forms of evil, dif- 
icult to change. He looked especially to his sixth 
"orm boys, taught by himself, to be guides of opinion 
md public feeling, and he sought through them to put 
lis own mind into all. In 1832 he bought for him- 
;elf a home, for vacation use and future retirement, at 
"ox How between Rydal and Ambleside. Upon all 
;trife of party in the church he looked with pain. In 
[839 he wrote, "When I think of the Church I could 
;it down and pine and die." There was the fury of 
■trife then that, in the early part of the reign of Vic- 
oria, had been stirred by the enthusiasm of those 

19* 



2g2 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

lAen who worked at Oxford for the restoration 
religion by the re-establishment of Church authoritj 
over opinion. What Dr. Arnold sought was a practia 
union of the spirit of religion with all action of th 
state or of the single citizen. He desired to see a 
human action founded upon Christian principles, an 
opinion free. In this sense he said, "It is because 
so earnestly desire the revival of the Church that 
abhor the doctrine of the Priesthood." Dr. Arnol 
will be more widely remembered as a shaper of me^ 
than of books; but his sermons delivered to the boy 
in Rugby Chapel, and other sermons that made pai; 
of his labour to build citizens, were collected intj 
volumes, and during that latter part of his life whic: 
fell within the reign of Victoria he published, betwee:^ 
1838 and 1843, his "History of Rome." Its las 
volume was posthumous. In 1841 he had accepte(j 
the duties of Regius Professor of Modern History a 
Oxford, and read his Inaugural Lecture in Decembei 
to the especial delight of all Rugby boys who wer< 
then Oxford men. On the morning of Sunday, th< 
1 2th of June, Thomas Arnold died in his bed of unj 
suspected heart disease. His last act before he wen 
to rest had been to make an entry in his diary. "Th(| 
day after to-morrow is my birth-day, if I am permittee 
to live to see it— my forty-seventh birth-day since ni} 
birth. How large a portion of my life on earth is al 
ready passed! And then — what is to follow this life' 
How visibly my outward work seems contracting anc 
softening away into the gentler employments of olc 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 293 

Lge! In one sense, how nearly can I now say, 'VixiM" 
Then follows expression of a desire to do, if it might 
)e, yet one thing. "But above all," he added, and 
hese were his last written words, "let me mind my 
'wn personal work,— to keep myself pure, and zealous, 
nd believing, — labouring to do God's will, yet not 
nxious that it should be done by me rather than by 
thers, if God disapproves my doing it." 

Here ends the record of this band of workers like 
lge. And with such music in its fall, another wave 
reaks on the shore of time. 



294 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER X. 

OF THOMAS CARLYLE, AND OF DIVINES AND WITS. 

Annan river, flowing through Dumfriesshire froi 
north to south, enters the Solway Firth when it ha 
passed a mile or two beyond Annan town. Five or si 
miles to the north of Annan is the village of Ecch 
fechan — the Church of St. Fechan — where an open bur 
once flowed along its single street. On the 4th of Augu; 
1792 Edward Irving was born near the old tow 
cross of Annan, one of the eight children of Gavi 
Irving, a tanner. In an adjoining house, that had tt 
same yard in common, was born one of Irving 
earliest play-fellows, a boy about four year older tha 
himself, who went to sea at thirteen, and afterwarc 
became famous as Hugh Clapperton, the African e^ 
plorer. On the 4th of December 1795 Thomi 
Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan. His father, Jam( 
Carlyle, was a stonemason, belonging to a family d* 
scribed by one of their neighbours as "pithy, bitte 
speaking bodies, and awfu' fechters." Carlyle himse 
says they were noted " for their brotherly affection an 
coherence, for their hard sayings and hard strikings 
James Carlyle was the steadiest and most prosperor 
of the family, though he never had more than thn 
months of formal education. His first wife dying 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 295 

year after marriage, he took for second wife Margaret 
Aitken, who had been a domestic servant, and who 
first learnt to use a pen in after years that she might 
be able to write to her son Thomas. In 1797 James 
Carlyle moved to a larger house, where other eight 
children were born. In 1806, when Thomas Carlyle's 
age was a little more than ten, his father took him to 
Annan School on a Whitsunday morning. "I," says 
Carlyle, "trotting by his side in the way alluded to in 
Teufelsdrockh. It was a bright morning, and to me 
full of movement, of fluttering boundless hopes, sad- 
dened by parting with mother, with home, and with 
hopes which afterwards were cruelly disappointed. He 
called once or twice in the grand schoolroom, as he 
chanced to have business at Annan; once sat down by 
me (as the master was out) and asked whether I was 
all well. The boys did not laugh as I feared; perhaps 
durst not. He was always generous to me in my 
school expenses; never by grudging look or word did 
he give me any pain. With a noble faith he launched 
me forth into a world which himself had never been 
permitted to visit." 

The schoolmaster was an Adam Hope, whose dili- 
gent use of the rod caused Carlyle, in "Sartor Re- 
sartus," to figure Annan school under the name of the 
Hinterschlag Gymnasium, as the burn at Ecclefechan, 
running to the Annan and the Solway Firth, was 
"the little Kuhbach, gushing kindly by, among beech- 
rows, through river after river, to the Donau." Edward 
Irving also had been taught by Adam Hope, and had 



296 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

left for the Edinburgh University, when he was thir- 
teen years old, a year before Carlyle's coming to 
Annan. "Old Adam," Carlyle wrote, "if you know 
the Annanites and him, will be curiously found visible 
there to this day; an argumentative, clear-headed, 
sound-hearted, if rather conceited and contentious 
set of people, more given to intellectual pursuits than 
some of their neighbours." 

At fourteen, Thomas Carlyle was sent to Edin- 
burgh, walking from Ecclefechan with a companion 
who was about to enter on his second year. Carlyle's 
father and mother were devout members of the Burgher 
Secession Kirk at Ecclefechan. It assembled in a rude 
meeting-house, under the ministration of the Rev. John 
Johnston, a venerable man to whose sermons Adam 
Hope and the Burgher Seceders from Annan travelled 
every sabbath six miles out and six miles home. The 
hope of James and Margaret Carlyle was to see their 
eldest son in the pulpit, and it was a bitter disap- 
pointment to the father when the son found that he 
could not enter the church. Carlyle himself told of 
this time in answer to a question from Dr. Milburn, 
a blind preacher from America, who asked how he 
came by his dyspepsia: "The voice came to me, say- 
ing, 'Arise and settle the problem of thy life!' I had 
been destined by my father and my father's minister 
to be myself a minister. But now that I had gained 
man's estate, I was not sure that I believed the doc- 
trines of my father's kirk; and it was needful I should 
now settle it. And so I entered into my chamber 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 297 

iand closed the door, and around me there came a 
trooping throng of phantasms dire from the abysmal 
depths of nethermost perdition. Doubt, Fear, Un- 
belief, Mockery, and Scorn were there; and I arose 
and wrestled with them in travail and agony of spirit. 
Whether I ate I know not; whether I slept I know 
not; I only know that when I came forth again it was 
with the direful persuasion that I was the miserable 
owner of a diabolical arrangement, called a stomach; 
and I have never been free from that knowledge from 
that hour to this, and I suppose that I never shall be 
until I am laid away in my grave." 

Thomas Carlyle took no degree in Edinburgh. In 
the summer of 1814, when in his nineteenth year, and 
still looking to the pulpit as his aim in life, he ob- 
tained, by competition at Dumfries, the post of mathe- 
matical master in the Annan Academy, where he 
earned £60 or ^70 a year. Thus he could relieve 
his father of expense while making the necessary ap- 
pearances at Edinburgh as a divinity student. It was 
usual for the Scottish clerical students to earn by 
teaching, after their first session in the "Divinity 
Hall." Edward Irving, also a divinity student at 
Edinburgh, had in the same manner, at the age of 
eighteen, been appointed, on the recommendation of 
Dr. Christison, the Humanity Professor, and Sir John 
Leslie, the Professor of Mathematics, to a newly estab- 
lished Mathematical School at Haddington. 

Irving is described by a pupil as having then been 
"a tall, robust, handsome youth, cheerful and kindly 



298 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

disposed, who soon won the confidence of his advanced! 
pupils, and was admitted into the best society in thej 
town and neighbourhood." The chief surgeon of Had-{ 
dington was Mr. John Welsh, with local rank as; 
Dr. Welsh, who owned part of some land that had 
belonged to his ancestors at Craigenputtock. He 
claimed descent from a famous John Welsh, Minister 
of Ayr, who married John Knox's youngest daughter. 
Dr. Welsh had an only daughter, Jane, whom he 
desired, since she was all he had, to educate as 
liberally as if she were a boy. Mrs. Welsh wished 
her to be educated as a girl, that is to say, left partly; 
uneducated. Little Jane, hearing the discussions about; 
herself, made up her own mind. Desiring to be 
educated as a boy, she worked secretly at Latin de- 
clensions, and broke, one evening, upon the discussion; 
between father and mother, by suddenly declining 
petifia, pe?tTicB, from under the table. The triumphant 
father asked Sir John Leslie to send him from Edin- 
burgh a sufficient tutor for so promising a child. Sir 
John replied that a sufficient tutor was already in 
Haddington. Edward Irving was, therefore, engaged'; 
to give lessons every morning to Miss Jane Welsh, 
from six to eight o'clock, before his own work in the 
school began. In that way Irving first established 
life-long friendship with the Jane Welsh who became 
Mrs. Carlyle. 

Carlyle, in whom some characteristics of a family 
of "pithy, bitter-speaking bodies" blended with a I 
sense of power and unsatisfied yearnings, frankly tells 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. SQQ 

how jealously he looked on Irving when he saw him 
first as an old boy of whom the Annan School was 
proud, returning flushed with successes from the Uni- 
versity, and looking in on Adam Hope in schoolhours. 
It was so also when Carlyle saw him for the second 
time, fresh from his new Academy at Haddington, 
where "as to his schoolmaster successes," Carlyle 
wrote, "I cared little about that, and easily flung that 
out when it came across me. But naturally all this 
betrumpeting of Irving to me (in which I could some- 
times trace some touch of malice to myself) had not 
awakened in me any love towards this victorious man." 
Of himself, as Mathematical Master at Annan, he said, 
"I was abundantly lonesome, uncomfortable, and out 
of place there. Didn't go and visit the people there. 
Ought to have pushed myself in a little silently, and 
sought invitations. Such their form of special polite- 
ness, which I was far too shy and proud to be able 
for." 

After two years at Haddington Irving obtained, 
through the good offices of Sir John Leslie, charge 
over a newly established Academy in "the lang town 
of Kirkcaldy," which stretched, little more than a thin 
line of street, a mile long, by the northern shore of 
the Firth of Forth. Irving's school -discipline was 
severe, beyond even the custom of the time; but out 
of school he was the friend and comrade of his boys 
and girls. One of his pupils, Isabella Martin, eldest 
daughter of the parish minister at Kirkcaldy, after- 
wards became his wife. In 1815 Irving obtained his 



300 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

license to preach, and his first sermon was preached 
in his native town. But he remained for another 
three years schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy, depreciated, 
when he preached there, as a young man with "ower 
muckle gran'ner," too much grandeur. His severity 
caused a third or fourth part of the parents of his 
pupils to revolt against him. They determined to 
revive the parish school by buying off an effete school- 
master, and applying again to Professors Christison and 
Leslie for a competent teacher. Thomas Carlyle was 
recommended. While that was being arranged, Irving 
again was in Annan, this time comforting old Adam 
Hope for the loss of his wife, and he met Carlyle 
engaged upon like duty. The complete unselfishness 
with which Irving welcomed Carlyle as one who was 
to be his neighbour, and offered to his proposed rival 
the use of his house while he was settling, conquered 
finally Carlyle's proud shyness. Carlyle went, and 
he says, "room for plenty of the vulgarest peddling 
feeling there was, and there must still have been be- 
tween us, had either of us, especially had Irving, been 
of pedlar nature. And I can say there could be no 
two Kaisers, nor Charlemagne and Barbarossa, had 
they neighboured one another in the empire of Europe, 
been more completely rid of all that sordes, than were 
we two schoolmasters in the burgh of Kirkcaldy." 
Thomas Carlyle, as schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy, was 
not less severe than Edward Irving; but in the end 
of 1 8x8 both Irving and Carlyle became weary of 
their work and left for Edinburgh, each with a little 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 3OI 

money saved; Irving with several hundred, and Carlyle 
with about one hundred pounds. At Kirkcaldy Carlyle 
is said to have been little known, "being then, as 
afterwards, moody and retiring in his disposition." 
While there he spent some time on a translation of 
Legendre's Geometry, which was published in 1824, 
with an introductory essay on Proportion of which 
Professor De Morgan afterwards wrote that it was "as 
good a substitute for the fifth book of Euclid as could 
be given in speech, and quite enough to show that 
Carlyle would have been a distinguished teacher and 
thinker in first principles." 

In 18 19 a letter from Irving represented his friend 
Carlyle as going from Edinburgh to Ecclefechan, say- 
ing, "I have the ends of my thoughts to bring to- 
gether, which no one can do in this thoughtless scene. 
I have my views of life to reform, and the whole plan 
of my conduct to new-model; and withal I have my 
health to recover. And then once more I shall ven- 
ture my bark upon the waters of this wide realm, 
and if she cannot weather it, I shall steer west and 
try the waters of another world! So," Irving wrote, 
"he reasons and resolves; but surely a worthier destiny 
awaits him than exile." Carlyle earned, from 1820 
to 1823, by writing articles in Brewster's Edinburgh 
Encyclopaedia and by other pen-work. His friend 
Irving had then begun enthusiastic labour among the 
poor under Chalmers at Glasgow. In 1823 Carlyle 
was introduced by Irving to his old pupil Jane Welsh, 
whose father was then dead, and had left to widow 



302 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and daughter Craigenputtock with what other pro- 
perty he had. In that year Irving received his call 
from the Caledonian Chapel in London. In July 
he began his ministration in Cross Street, Hatton 
Garden. His tall figure, the spiritual face alight with 
enthusiasm, the dignity of earnestness, too real to be 
marred by a squint that he had from his birth, the 
grandeur of manner that had perplexed Kirkcaldy, 
and the frank goodness of Irving's whole nature, were 
felt by all who came under his influence. Wilkie, the 
painter, came to hear his countryman, and came again, 
bringing Sir Thomas Lawrence. Zachary Macaulay was 
impressed. Sir James Mackintosh, induced to look 
in, heard Irving pray for a family of orphans as now 
"thrown upon the fatherhood of God," and repeated 
the phrase to Canning. Canning at once engaged to 
go with Mackintosh to Irving's church on the follow- 
ing Sunday. He did so. A few days afterwards some- 
thing was said, in a debate on Church matters, about 
the necessary relation between high qualifications and 
high pay. Canning then told the House that he him- 
self had lately heard a Scotch minister, trained in one 
of the most poorly endowed of churches, preach the 
most eloquent sermon he had ever listened to. This 
reference awakened public curiosity, and London 
"Society" was thenceforth set down in many carriages, 
Sunday after Sunday, at the small chapel in Cross 
Street, Hatton Garden. Irving had become one of the 
most praised and most abused of men, but kept his 
pure-hearted enthusiasm unstained, when he married, 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 303 

in October 1823, his old pupil, Miss Martin, the 
minister's daughter at Kirkcaldy. In that first year 
of his popularity, Irving again helped Thomas Carlyle. 
Finding a tutor wanted to prepare Charles Buller and 
his brother Arthur for College, Irving advised that 
Charles Buller should be sent to the University of 
Edinburgh, and placed under the tutorship of Carlyle. 
This was done, and Carlyle received ^^200 a year for 
his private teaching of a brilliant youth whose death, 
when he had risen to manhood with high promise of 
all usefulness, was followed by no tribute to his 
memory more eloquent and warm-hearted than that 
of Thomas Carlyle, which was published in "the 
Examiner" newspaper. 

Carlyle's pen-work was growing in importance when 
he had Charles Buller for a pupil. Still there was 
the unsatisfied aspiration of a mind conscious of depths 
yet to be stirred. In 1823 Carlyle was impelled to 
some trials of verse, and in a "Tragedy of the Night 
Moth," who is too evidently a poetical poor cousin to 
Burns's "Mouse," he wrote: 

Poor moth ! thy fate my own resembles : 

Me too a restless asking mind 
Hath sent on far and weary rambles, 

To seek the good I ne'er shall find. 

Like thee, with common lot contented, 

With humble joys and vulgar fate, 
I might have lived and ne'er lamented, 

Moth of a larger size, a longer date. 

He had contributed a paper on Goethe's "Faust" to a 
"New Edinburgh Review," in 1822. The first part of 



304 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

his "Life of Schiller"* was contributed to "the Londor 
Magazine," in October 1823, the rest appeared in thej 
course of 1824, in which year he received ^50 foi; 
his translation of Legendre, which was edited b> 
Brewster. In the same year also he published his 
translation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," with a| 
preface in which he expressed his wish to turn the 
English reader from a false and sentimental notion of* 
the great poet of Germany, based on a misreading of 
"Faust," to a true sense of his large and healthy power 
The translation, for which Carlyle received a^i8o, was 
praised and abused until it obtained public attention. 
After the printing of "Wilhelm Meister," Carlyle 
came to London, in June 1824, staying as guest with 
his friend Irving for the first few weeks, and then 
taking rooms in Irving's neighbourhood. Irving's house : 
was open to him as a brother's during his stay in 
London, which ended in March 1825. In London, 
plagued with dyspepsia, Carlyle was teaching Charles 
Buller, impatient of Mrs. Buller's changeful plans, 
until he finally advised that his pupil should be sent 
straight to Cambridge, and there placed under a Cam- 
bridge tutor. There was a little money now in hand, 
and in the next year, 1825, Carlyle received ^100 for 
the publication of the "Life of Schiller," in a volume. 
When contributed to the "Magazine," no payment had 
been received for it. 

In the next year, 1826, Thomas Carlyle married 
Jane Welsh. He was then thirty years old. One of 
* Carlyle's "Life of Schiller" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



I 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 305 

the good friends he had made iu London, Bryan 
Procter — "Barry Cornwall" — gave him a letter of in- 
troduction to Francis Jeffrey. In the "Edinburgh 
Review" Jeffrey had pronounced the Life of Schiller 
"eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous and affected," 
but he had slipped towards the close of his review 
into "some feeling of mollification," and ended by 
finding the author to be "a person of talents." Armed 
with personal introduction, Carlyle faced Jeffrey in his 
study. Jeffrey had better insight into men than into 
books, and with aid of human intercourse he soon 
found Thomas Carlyle to be not merely "a person of 
talents" but a man of genius. He understood some- 
thing of the struggle of the soul hungering for noble 
work, and not without that hunger also for a sym- 
pathetic answer from its fellows which gives to men 
of genius who live secluded lives their greed for fame. 
It is a yearning that has not one point in common 
w^ith the shallow greed for notoriety in those who care 
more for themselves than for their thoughts. Jeffrey's 
kind heart was quickly moved to sympathy, and 
friendly relations were at once established. 

After much deliberation, Carlyle and his wife re- 
solved to live upon the wife's little property at Craigen- 
puttock, where the pen could be busy in earning, and 
the mind free to determine its true work in life. They 
went in May 1828, Carlyle then being thirty-two 
years old. Jeffrey promised to visit them, and did so. 
Articles in the "Edinburgh Review" became, from 
1828 to 1831, one source of income. The first articles, 

Of English Literature. 20 



306 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

written in 1828, were those on "Jean Paul Richter" 
and on "Burns." Some influence of Jean Paul Richter 
upon Carlyle's mind and style was manifest to the 
end, and no thoughtful reader of Carlyle's first article 
in "The Edinburgh" can fail to observe passages in 
which the writer hints unconsciously some lights and 
shades from his own mind as characteristics of Jean 
Paul. The sympathetic insight of genius was in 
Carlyle's paper upon Burns. 

In his first year at Craigenputtock Carlyle placed 
himself in correspondence with Goethe, who wrote a 
preface to a German translation of his "Life of Schiller," 
and regarded him as the first Englishman who had 
found his way to the heart of German Literature. "Let 
me yet confess," he wrote to Goethe, in September 
1828, "that I am uncertain about my future literary 
work, about which I should be glad to get your opinion." 
Within easy reach of Edinburgh, but placed among 
granite hills and moorlands in what he called the 
loneliest spot in Britain, six miles from any person 
who might be disposed to call on him, Carlyle had 
freedom to work out the problem of his life, and with 
it the problem of the life of every man. In 1827 he 
published "Specimens of German Romance." In De- 
cember 1829 he wrote to Jeffrey, "I have some thoughts 
of beginning to prophesy next year, if I prosper." 
Next year, at the age of thirty four, between January 
and August, 1830 "Sartor Resartus" was written. 
All voices out of the depths of his own past and present 
life were there. Half disguising the intensity of direct 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 



307 



speech by uttering it from under the grotesque mask 
of the German Professor, Godborn Devilsdung, Diogenes 
Teufelsdrokh, who had written a book on Clothes 
Philosophy; with poetic irony playing the humorous 
critic upon quotations from the Professor's book, which 
were utterances that came glowing from Carlyle's own 
inmost soul; he felt that he had struck at last the true 
note of his life. In the middle of August 1831 he 
came to London with his book, to find a publisher. 
The book had been written to no pattern known in 
the trade. His wife followed him to London, in De- 
cember, with the last letter written to him by his 
father. In January 1832, while he was still in London, 
his father died. Then he closed his door and wrote 
:hose recollections which form one section of the "Re- 
niniscences" published after Thomas Carlyle's own 
death. "Thank Heaven," he wrote at the close, "I 
mow and have known what it is to be a son; to love 
I father, as spirit can love spirit, God give me to live 
o my father's honour, and to His." 

Disappointed in London, Carlyle after his return 
o Craigenputtock, in the spring of 1832, applied to 
effrey— then Lord Advocate— for aid to the obtain- 
ng of an appointment as keeper of an Observatory 
hen being established in Edinburgh. Jeffrey, whose 
indness to Carlyle had led him to offer aid of ^100 
year to the Craigenputtock household,— an oifer, of 
ourse, not accepted— did not encourage this attempt 
D turn again from Literature to Mathematics. Carlyle 
attled on. In the years 1833-34, "Sartor Resartus" 



20" 



3o8 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

appeared as a series of articles in "Eraser's Magazine. 
In May 1834 Thomas Carlyle and his wife left Craiger 
puttock for London, and established themselves in thl 
house that was Carlyle's home for the rest of his life 
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea. Thenceforward Carlyle's wa 
was clear before him, though for some years difficu: 
to tread. His next book was "The French Revolutioii 
A History," published in the first year of the Reig] 
of Victoria; and it was not until the following yea 
1838 that "Sartor Resartus" was published in Englan, 
as a volume. 

Thomas Carlyle came to London in May 183.^ 
and in December of the same year Edward Irvini 
died, wasted by consumption. Advance of the diseas; 
was hastened by the trials of his later years. Th] 
fervour and the high aims, common to them both, thj^ 
had brought Irving and Carlyle into early fellowshi] 
had caused Irving to magnify his priestly office wit 
intensity of zeal. If, like Carlyle, he chose rather 1 
be master than disciple, his aspirations were not the le; 
pure and sincere. He felt as an Apostle when, a; 
sisting Chalmers in Glasgow, he entered every po(! 
room that he visited with a solemn "Peace be to th 
House." He feh as a Prophet when, at last, in 18^ 
the gifts lost through the little faith of men seeme 
to him to be recovered by disciples to whom he hiri 
self ministered, and he mistook the delusions of hy 
terical women for descent from Heaven of the gift 
tongues that is spoken of in the 14th Chapter 
the I St Epistle to the Corinthians. There never w, 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 309 

a more honest or, to most men, a more obvious de- 
lusion than this which made ^vreck of the life of 
Edward Irving. His loving ardent mind had sought 
to lead men out of darkness far into the light beyond 
the veil that shrouds the mysteries of God. In the 
hour of death it consoled him to think that he had 
triumphed by the restoration in some souls of living 
faith, and, as he lay wasted by sickness, he believed 
that in his hour of utmost weakness God was about 
miraculously to renew his faithful servant's strength. 
When the end came, his last words were "If I die, I 
die unto the Lord;" and his strength was renewed, 
though not in this world. 

Irving's writings were collected, and his life told in 
1862 by Margaret Oliphant, a lady, born about the 
year 18 18, who began her career as a novelist in 1849 
with "Passages from the Life of Mrs. Margaret Mait- 
land." In many subsequent novels among which 
may be named "Chronicles of Carlingford" and 
'Salem Chapel," Mrs. Oliphant has shown always a 
identic spirit under a quick, womanly sense of life and 
character. She published also in 1870 a life of St. 
jFrancis of Assisi, and in 1876 a book on "the Makers 
Df Florence: Dante, Giotto, Savonarola, and their City." 
I Thomas Carlyle, when he settled in London, had 
his intellectual way clear before him. He also sought, 
as every writer of foremost power has sought, and still 
seeks, in the reign of Victoria, to aid as he could in 
the work of citizen-building. He felt the lowness of 
the civilization yet attained by man, overstated it, and 



310 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

laboured throughout life to raise it. "Not what I have, 
but what I do, is my kingdom," he taught in " Sartor | 
Resartus," and in every book written afterwards. 
Through the mere surroundings of life, man's clothes, 
his wealth and house and land, his body's dress, and 
his soul's dress which the body is, straight through 
this to the life within, we must look if we wish to 
see ourselves, or know one another. That is the 
Clothes Philosophy. The life within, which is alone 
worth cherishing, owes all its health to action, and 
for the advance of the world by true citizen -building 
the one thing needful is, that each should live his 
own life worthily. While setting aside dogmatic 
theology, Carlyle, in "Sartor Resartus" and in every 
book that followed it, held fast to a faith in God and 
immortality, and made it his work as a writer to teach 
men to live vigorous lives: "Most true is it," he said, 
"as a wise man teaches us, that doubt of any sort 
cannot be removed except by Action. On which 
ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness 
or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the 
dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept also 
well to heart, which to me was of invaluable ser- 
vice: — Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, which 
thou knowest to be a Duty. The second duty will 
already have become clearer. May we not say, how- 
ever, that the hour of spiritual enfranchisement is 
even this? When your ideal world, wherein the 
whole man has been dimly struggling and inex- 
pressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed and 



LNT THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 31I 

thrown open, and you discover with amazement 
enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that 
your America is here or nowhere. The situation that 
has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by 
man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable, hampered 
actual wherein thou even now standest, here or no- 
where, is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom, believe, 
live, and be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the 
impediment too is in thyself Thy condition is but 
the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of. 
What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or 
that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? 
O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, 
and criest bitterly to the Gods for a kingdom wherein 
to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing 
thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, 
couldst thou only see." 

Carlyle's way of thought, like that of all the fore- 
most thinkers in England during the Reign of Victoria, 
is in some sense a product of the forces that produced 
the great upheaval described with all the fervour of 
his genius in his book on the French Revolution. 
Throughout his life Carlyle held by the great central 
truth, that real advance can be secured only by de- 
velopment of the individual. Like Wordsworth, he in- 
sisted upon universal education, and dwelt on it in 
the book on "Chartism" published in 1839. ^^^ 
contempt for the blind action of the masses, and the 
inclination shown very distinctly in his "Chartism," 
and in later books with growing force, for government 



312 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of the brute herd by despotism of some man who 
really lives his life and works his will, may be taken 
as part of a strong insistance upon one great truth, 
the deep conviction of his life, that all his genius was 
spent in bringing home to others. His book "On 
Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History," 
published in 1841, was full of broadest sympathy with 
individual men, whatever their type of thought, who 
had known themselves and the purpose of their lives, 
had worked their will, and risen high above the 
servile crowd of imitators who reproduce dead forms 
of life, and so are what Carlyle called "Apes of the 
Dead Sea." 

Carlyle knew and loved a man, whenever he came 
near enough to see him. His own father seemed the 
best of men, and his own wife the best of women. 
Of men in the past, whose deeds and motives he could 
scrutinize in the retirement of his study, and who 
thus yielded to his penetrating genius the secrets of 
their lives, he discerned the worthiness or worthless- 
ness, and he took pleasure in the contemplation of 
their strength. But the men who lived about him in 
the world, and who could be known only by free and 
equal intercourse outside the study, his shy self-con- 
scious spirit seldom came near enough to understand. 
Of them he was at home a "pithy, bitter speaking 
body," best liking those of whom he knew the most, 
and full of a delicate kindness in his personal rela- 
tions with them. The worthiness of his subject and 
the fidelity with which he reproduced Cromwell speak- 



m THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 313 



ing 



his own thoughts in his own words, gave dignity 
to the study of Cromwell, simply entitled "Oliver 
Cromwell's Letters and Speeches; with Elucidations," 
which Carlyle published in 1845. His love for a 
friend, who was not a strong man but who yet sought 
honestly to work out his convictions, gives beauty as 
tvell as strength to Carlyle's "Life of John Sterling," 
Dublished in 185 1. In 1848 Archdeacon Hare, to 
vhom and to Carlyle Sterling had committed all dis- 
:retion as to the editing of his writings, had published 
Tohn Sterling's Essays and Tales with a sketch of his 
ife. Sterling had been ordained as a clergyman, had 
;erved the Church for a few months, but had been 
ed, partly, no doubt, by his friend Carlyle, away from 
he fold of the Church to simple love of God and 
aith in Him. Julius Hare, in no narrow spirit, had 
liscussed this feature in Sterling from a point of view 
mhin the Church, and Carlyle felt bound to tell the 
/orld his friend's life from an other point of view. He 
howed him faithfully as "among the million little 
•eautiful, once more a beautiful human soul; whom I, 
mong others, recognized and lovingly walked, while 
le years and hours were." But Carlyle knew little 
f life among the million, who were therefore "little 
eautiful" for him. 

In 1858, 1862, and 1865 Carlyle published, by 
vo volumes at a time, the six volumes of his "History 
f Frederick the Great," a work by which he again 
Hied himself to German thought. He had been 
rawn towards Frederick by admiration of strong in- 



314 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

dividual will. Subsequent events have shown that 
Frederick's work was the shaping not only of a strong 
Prussia but through it of a strong United Germany,, 
there was no want, therefore, of a right historic sense 
in giving fourteen years of work to such a theme. 
But Frederick was not another Cromwell, and Carlyle 
became more and more conscious of his hero's un 
worthiness while still he was upholding him as type 
of the man of strong will who beats down all obstacles, 
achieves his own ends and controls the destinies of 
others. While Carlyle showed in this History hi& 
marvellous power at its height, there is no book of hisj 
that defines more clearly the limitations of his power, 
or more frequently chafes the reader by the twists 
and wrenches given to our mother tongue. What had| 
been a slight fault in the earlier books, caught from' 
half imitation of Jean Paul and other German Writers; 
by a secluded man of genius who wished to speak 
out of his own depths in his own way, became in the 
later books a vice of style. Young writers with their 
hearts kindled at the fire of Carlyle's genius, paid 
him, in the only possible way, the sincere flattery of 
imitation. They copied the faults of style which it 
required no genius to reproduce. Even now there is to| 
be met with, here and there, a man of high and mature 
intellectual power who cannot altogether free his books 
from the trick caught in his youth through generousj 
enthusiasm for books glowing with true eloquenct. 

Carlyle's attention was fixed so exclusively on litt 
within each Man, that he paid no regard at all to theu 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 315 

National life as it may be said to exist within a 
People. His friend Joseph Mazzini, whose disposition 
was exactly opposite in this respect, had, of course, a 
quick eye for such deficiency. "Mr. Carlyle," said 
Mazzini, "comprehends only the individual; the true 
sense of the unity of the human race escapes him. 
He sympathises with all men, but it is with the 
separate life of each, and not with their collective 
life. He readily looks at every man as the represen- 
tative, the incarnation, in a manner, of an idea: he 
does not believe in a 'supreme idea,' represented 
progressively by the development of mankind taken 
as a whole. . . . The great religious idea, the continued 
development of Humanity by a collective labour, ac- 
cording to an educational plan designed by Pro- 
vidence, finds but a feeble echo, or rather no echo 
at all, in his soul. . . . The nationality of Italy is in 
his eyes the glory of having produced Dante and 
Christopher Columbus; the nationality of Germany that 
of having given birth to Luther, to Goethe, and to 
others. The shadow thrown by these gigantic men 
appears to eclipse from his view every trace of the 
national thought of which these men were only the 
interpreters or prophets, and of the people, who alone 
are its depositary." 

It is so. But is it not enough for one man to 
uphold firmly throughout his life one vital truth? The 
national thought was in Carlyle himself when he 
became one of its prophets. The French Revolution 
of which he . described so powerfully the wild tumult 



316"' OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of the lives that were involved in it, though he showed 
little knowledge of its meaning, by its failure taught 
us our own slower and surer way to the ideal of 
which it had dreamed."^ Along the path first shown to 
us by Wordsworth Carlyle followed unconsciously, and 
all the stress he laid on the shaping of each single 
man, was simply such work as the time required. We 
build a strong wall with sound bricks, a strong state 
with sound citizens. It is no reproach to the brick- 
maker that he is not bricklayer as well. 

In 1833-34, when Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" was 
first appearing in "Eraser's Magazine," there was quick 
movement in the University of Oxford towards use of 
the whole mechanism of the Church for aid in the 
lifting of the minds of men. There was one aim in 
men so different as Thomas Carlyle and John Henry 
Newman. Each said, Let us put a soul into our dead 
conventions and help men to live true lives to highest 
aims. John Henry Newman was born in 1801, the 
son of a banker in Lombard Street. He was educated 
at Ealing School and elected to a scholarship in 
Trinity College Oxford, when yet very young. He 
graduated with honours in 1820, and obtained a 
Fellowship at Oriel. Newman had, with keen shrewd- 
ness of wit, a poet's nature,*"^ and he has written 
some pieces of good religious verse. Keble's "Christian 

* Carlyle's "French Revolution," his "Cromwell," and his 
"Frederick the Great," occupy 20 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 

** J. H. Newman's "Callista" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 317 

Year," published in 1827, quickened in him the belief 
that all the ancient forms and institutions of the 
Church, restored to their position of pure spiritual 
symbols, might cease to be dead traditions, and give 
aid in revival of the dying fire within the souls of 
Churchmen. John Keble's sermon on "National Apo- 
stasy," in 1833, spread zeal for this revival of religion 
among many members of the University. John Henry 
Newman suggested the issue of a series of "Tracts for 
the Times" — some "Ad Clerum" and some "Ad Po- 
pulum" — to spread abroad the desire for an escape 
from formalism by deepening the general sense of 
holiness and beauty in the rites and ordinances of the 
Church. The first Tract, sold for a penny, was ad- 
dressed to the Clergy. It contained "Thoughts on the 
Ministerial Commission," which dwelt upon the Apo- 
stolical Succession of the Bishops, and sole priesthood 
of those whom bishops had ordained. At the close 
of the year 1833, Dr. Pusey, Regius Professor of 
Hebrew in the University, joined the movement. Ed- 
ward Bouverie Pusey, born in 1800, had been educated 
at Christ Church, and had been elected to a Fellow- 
ship at Oriel. He became Regius Professor of Hebrew 
and Canon of Christ Church at the age of 28, and 
was thirty-three years old, Newman being thirty-two, 
when the movement began. It was in full force dur- 
ing the first years of the Reign of Victoria. 

The new Oxford movement was stoutly resisted, 
on the ground that the stress laid by it on priesthood 
and on strictness of ceremonial would cause many to 



3l8 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

find no stopping place until they entered the com- 
munioii of the Church of Rome. That Dr. Newman 
himself, following the bent of a devout mind in the 
direction to which it inclined, did find his way into 
the Church of Rome, and is now the most distin- 
guished of its Cardinals, has justified this opinion. In 
February 1841, No. 90 of "Tracts for the Times," 
written by Dr. Newman, contained "Remarks on Cer- 
tain Passages in the Thirty-nine Articles," in which he 
argued that the pale of the Church of England was 
wide enough to contain him. But Dr. Newman owned 
afterwards that he argued against doubts rising within 
himself. In October 1845 he joined the Church of 
Rome. The followers of these new teachers were 
called "Puseyites" and have since been called "Ritua- 
lists" or High Churchmen, and they have always been 
a cause of great alarm to the large body of English- 
men who hold by the ancient dread of Rome, and still 
wish for a Church based upon the Bible with the least 
possible admixture of human traditions. It is the old 
contest of opinion, unchanged in spirit, or in the sin- 
cerity of combatants on either side, that runs through 
our History, and has left way-marks in the writings 
of Wiclif, in Pecock's "Repressor," in Hooker's "Eccle- 
siastical Polity," and many another earnest utterance. 
Opposite bias of mind in brothers equally earnest in 
desire to be true to their deepest convictions, has caused 
Francis Newman, who is four years younger than his 
brother, to quit the Church of England by a directly 
opposite door. His books published in 1849 and 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA, 319 

1850, "the Soul, its Sorrows and Aspirations," and 
"Phases of Faith," showed depths of earnest feeling 
in expression of his doubts. Dr. Pusey's age was 37, 
Dr. Newman's 36 at the beginning of the reign; his 
brother's ^2, and thirty-two was the age of three other 
men active in Church questions, Samuel Wilberforce, 
Frederick Denison Maurice, and James Martineau. 

Samuel Wilberforce, third son of the famous com- 
batant against slavery, became Bishop of Oxford in 
1844, and was soon distinguished for his vigorous sup- 
port of those who sought to put new life into religion, 
by strengthening the claims of the English Church 
upon allegiance of the people to the clergy, and alle- 
giance of the clergy to its ancient ritual. Dr. Wilber- 
force, who was distinguished in society for many 
pleasant qualities, was translated to Winchester in 
1869, and died of a fall from his horse in 1873. As 
X wTiter he is best known by two small religious story 
books, published in 1840, which are among the best 
of their kind, "Rocky Island and other Parables," and 
Agathos, and other Sunday Stories." 

Frederick Denison Maurice was with John Sterling 
as one of the pupils of Julius Charles Hare at Trinity 
College Cambridge. Julius Hare, with his brother 
Augustus, had published a volume of Thoughts called 
"Guesses at Truth" in 1827, the year after he was 
ordained. Maurice and Sterling became bound more 
closely together by marriage with two sisters. Julius 
Hare became Archdeacon of Lewes in 1840, married 
the sister of his friend Maurice in 1844, and died in 



32p OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

1855. Maurice, born in 1805, was the son of I 
Unitarian Minister. He qualified for his degree i\ 
Cambridge, but could not, in those days, take ij 
because he had scruples about subscription to th! 
39 Articles of the Church of England. He came t| 
London, studied law, and wrote in journals, till th 
beginning of 1830, when he went to Oxford. Ther 
he was drawn into the Church of England as th! 
Castle of Unity. He graduated, and was ordained i 
January 1833. His sympathy with Newman and hi 
friends was destroyed by one of the "Tracts for th 
Times" in which Dr. Newman laid stress upon Baptisr 
by the Church as a condition of Salvation. Maurici 
published a tract called "Subscription no Bondage," iij 
which the desire was expressed for a wide comi 
prehension of many forms of honest opinion withiil 
limits of the Church of England. Broad Church wai 
the name given to those who laboured afterwards witl 
Maurice, and with others like him, for a large freedon 
of intellectual opinion upon matters of dogma where 
there was one aspiration towards spiritual fellowshij 
with Christ. Those who represented the old spirit 0: 
the Lollards and the Puritans, in dread of Romish 
ceremonial, and who derived from passages in the 
New Testament a code of doctrines which they taught 
as vital truths of the gospel, which they must believe 
who would be saved, were called Low Church o^ 
Evangelical. Few things have been more conspicuous 
during the Reign of Victoria than the slow but con- 
stant advance towards a tolerance of the inevitable 



IN, THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 321 

differences upon points dependent on the bias of 
opinion. The various communities of Christians, 
through the words and deeds of men like Frederick 
Maurice are every year being drawn nearer to one 
another in the bond of peace. Few would dread in 
1 88 1 such fair discussion by religious men as raised 
a storm over the "Essays and Reviews"* published in 
i860, and the "Ecce Homo" of 1866. 

Maurice married in 1837, when he was chaplain 
to Guy's Hospital, and in 1838 set forth his view of a 
true Church in three volumes upon "The Kingdom of 
Christ." In May 1840 he was appointed Professor of 
English Literature at King's College, London, and in 
1846 Professor of Ecclesiastical History there. In 1848 
he was among the founders of the first College in 
England for the higher Education of Women, Queen's 
College in Harley Street, of which he was the first 
Principal. For want of faith in Eternal Punishment 
shown in "Theological Essays," then published, Fre- 
derick Maurice was dismissed from his Professorship 
at King's College in 1853. In 1854, as the result of 
a movement which he had been guiding for some 
years, he established a Working Men's College in Lon- 
don. In 1866 he was appointed Professor of Moral 
Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, for which 
he had proved his fitness by valuable books upon the 
history of Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern Philosophy 
published between 1850 and 1862. Among his directly 

* "Essays and Reviews" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 
Of English Literature, 2 1 



322 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

religious writings some of the best are in the form of 
sermons delivered by him as Lecturer at Lincoln's Inn. 
He died in 1872. 

James Martineau, the foremost representative of 
those English Christians who openly repudiate the 
doctrine of the Trinity as formulated in the Athana- 
sian creed, is a younger brother of Harriet Martineau. 
He was born in 1805 at Norwich, educated at the 
Norwich Grammar School, at Dr. Lant Carpenter's 
school in Bristol, and at Manchester New College, 
York. From 1832 to 1857 he preached at Liverpool; 
then, in London. In 1868 he became Principal of 
Manchester New College in London. In his "En- 
deavours after the Christian Life" published in two 
volumes, one in 1843 the other in 1847, the position 
is taken by which Dr. Martineau abides in all his 
writings. With a fine intellect and much grace of 
imagination to give life to his expression of deep, 
earnest thought, he also seeks the larger fellowship of 
Christians in a spiritual church. 

Again there is evidence of the difficulty, even within 
one household, of keeping earnest minds from following 
their own way in pursuit of truth. As George Herbert 
of old, one of the best and purest of what are now 
called "High Churchmen," had for his eldest brother a 
man who, in religious spirit, denied the existence of a 
special revelation either to the Jew or to the Chris- 
tian; as the brothers John Henry Newman and Francis 
Newman went opposite ways; so Harriet Martineau 
lost before death the faith in which she and her 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 323 

brother had been bred, but lost no part of her desne 
towards the highest life. 

In the earlier part of the Reign of Victoria, Miss 
Martineau enriched its Literature with many earnest 
books. A novel on the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture, 
the slave who called his fellows into freedom and was 
crushed by the power of Napoleon, is called "The 
Hour and the Man." Wordsworth had written a sonnet 
on the fate of Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Miss 
Martineau's novel was written with as generous a 
sympathy. Her preceding novel, "Deerbrook," pub- 
lished in 1839, paints English domestic life, with the 
unobtrusive spirit of duty that sustains its charm. 
Among many good short stories of Miss Martineau's 
may be named "the Billow and the Rock," published 
in 1846. A more laborious enterprise, conceived 
and undertaken as an aid to the diffusion of a right 
sense of what makes the strength of nations, was her 
"History of the Thirty Years' Peace, 1816-46," a work 
planned and begun by Charles Knight but mainly 
written by Miss Martineau. The book was published 
in 1850. In 1853 Miss Martineau published a digest 
of Comte's Positive Philosophy. Such books as "House- 
hold Education" in 1849, ^^^ "Health, Husbandry and 
Handicraft" in 1 861, indicated her continued interest in 
the advance of knowledge among the people. She 
died in June 1876. 

To the group of writers who were between thirty 
and forty years old at the accession of Victoria belongs 
also Edwin Chadwick, who was of the same age as 



324 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Harriet Martineau. He was in his early life one of the' 
friends of Jeremy Bentham, and began his career as 
a writer in "the Westminster Review" in 1828. Mr. 
Chadwick has spent a long life in strenuous labour for 
the well-being of the people, and is working still. He 
has given the most direct aid to Poor Law Administra- 
tion; to the relief of children from undue labour in the 
Factories, and to the education of Factory children; to 
the advance of Public Education generally, and to the 
advance of Public Health. He was among the first 
to turn the public mind to questions of sanitary 
reform. 

The two wittiest men of this group, Thomas Hood 
and Douglas Jerrold, gave also their best energy to the 
endeavour to reduce the evil done by man to man. 
Thomas Hood, born in May 1799, was the son of a 
London bookseller and publisher, of the firm of Vernor, 
Hood and Sharpe, in the Poultry. His mother was 
sister to an engraver and, after some education at a 
Clapham school. Hood was apprenticed to his uncle. 
The health of all the family was delicate. Father and 
elder brother died while Thomas Hood was very 
young, then followed the mother, and a sister, whose 
deathbed is the subject of her brother's touching 
poem "We watched her breathing through the night." 

The delicate health of Hood himself compelled 
him to give up work as an engraver. In 182 1 he was 
at work for the "London Magazine," and in 1824 he 
married a sister of John Hamilton Reynolds, one of 
his fellow-contributors. He joined his brother-in-law. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 325 

in 1825 in producing "Odes and Addresses to Great 
People," which attained great popularity. Two series 
of "Whims and Oddities" followed in 1826 and 1827, 
and in 1827 Hood showed his grace as a serious poet 
in a volume containing "the Plea of the Midsummer 
Fairies" and other pieces. In 1829 Hood published, 
in an annual called "the Gem," the most powerful of 
his serious poems, "the Dream of Eugene Aram." At 
Christmas 1830, he produced the first volume of his 
"Comic Annual." The kindliest wit and satire, jokes 
poured out incessantly from pen and pencil, supplied 
the needs of Hood's household, while in himself con- 
sumption was not slowly advancing. In 1834, ^^e 
failure of a firm brought heavy loss upon him; his 
health also became worse, and he went abroad. In 1835 
a son was born, Thomas Hood the younger, who died 
in 1874, and within his short life of forty years main- 
tained, after his father's death, by genial wit as a 
comic writer, pleasant associations with an honoured 
name. In the beginning of the present reign Thomas 
Hood, the father, 39 years old, was quitting Coblentz 
for Ostend, disease advancing rapidly. He continued 
the "Comic Annual" as a sure source of income; 
published "Hood's Own;" and suggested a grim 
epitaph for himself, "Here lies one who spat more 
blood and made more puns than any other man." 
His "Up the Rhine," published in 1839, ^^as very suc- 
cessful, but troubles with publishers clouded his suc- 
cess. In 1840 he returned to London, and had still 
to earn by his wit. He wrote for Theodore Hook in 



326 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

"the New Monthly Magazine," and upon Hook's death, 
in 1 84 1, became editor, with a salary of 0^300 a year, 
apart from payment for the articles he wrote. At 
this time "Punch" was established, and a little poem 
by Thomas Hood calling for sympathy with the poor 
women ground down by employers of their labour with 
the needle, — a poem as pathetic as his "Bridge of 
Sighs," — stirred all England in 1843. Hood cared 
more for the success of this appeal to humanity against 
"what man has made of man" than for all his wit be- 
sides, and asked that it might be written over his 
grave "He sang 'the Song of the Shirt.'" In January 
1844 he left "the New Monthly" and established a 
Magazine of his own, "Hood's Magazine." In June 1844 
Sir Robert Peel, in his own gracious way that doubled 
the value of such kindnesses, secured to Mrs. Hood a 
pension of 5^ 1 00 from the Civil List, that the poet : 
might die with one earthly care the less. He died on. 
the 3d of May 1845. From Theodore Hook to Thomas^ 
Hood was a stride forward in civilization; for it was 
not in Hood only that English wit took the new way 
of the time and laboured for the uplifting of the: 
fallen. 

Douglas William Jerrold was born on the 3d ofl' 
January, 1803, son of an elderly strolling actor by his 
young second wife. When he was four years old, his 
father managed a theatre at Sheerness, and he acted 
when a child was needed on the stage. He was sent 
to a school at Sheerness where he was one of a hun-< 
dred boys. He was handsome, white-haired, rosy 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 327 

cheeked, a great reader; "the only athletic sport I 
ever mastered," he said, "was backgammon." In 
18 1 3, when he was ten years old, Douglas Jerrold 
volunteered as midshipman on board His Majesty's 
guardship "the Namur," lying in the Nore. In 1815, 
when a little more than twelve years old, he was 
transferred to the brig "Ernest," which brought in 
July to Sheerness a cargo of men wounded in battle. 
In the following October, Jerrold's experience as a 
sailor ended. The war was over; the Sheerness theatre 
had lived by it; Jerrold's father failed, and the family 
removed to London, where, in 18 16, Douglas Jerrold 
was apprenticed to a printer. In 1818, at fifteen 
years old, he wrote a farce which was acted in 18 19, 
at Sadlers' Wells, as "More Frightened than Hurt." 
This farce was translated into French, and afterwards 
returned to the English stage as a translation from 
the French under the name of "Fighting by Proxy," 
with Liston in its chief character. In 1823, young 
Jerrold, twenty years old, shared Byron's enthusiasm 
for the cause of Greece. He was then writing dramatic 
criticism in a paper published by the printer whom 
he served, and also writing plays for minor theatres, 
"the Smoked Miser" among them. In 1824, aged 21, 
he married. Between 1825 and 1829 he was writing 
pieces for the Coburg and Sadlers' Wells theatres, 
and for Vauxhall. In 1829, he was engaged by Ellis- 
ton the actor, then managing the Surrey Theatre, as 
Dramatic Writer at a salary of five pounds a week. 
In that capacity, at the age of twenty-six, he at once 



328 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

gave the manager a prize in "Black-Eyed Susan." 
This was produced on Whitmonday 1829, with 
T. P. Cooke as William. All London came to see it; 
and when fashionable London objected to cross the 
Thames, T. P. Cooke was engaged to play in "Black- 
Eyed Susan" every evening at Drury Lane after it 
had been acted at the Surrey. The piece produced 
thousands for others, but for its author only seventy 
pounds. Jerrold himself laid no false emphasis on 
this success. "Why, Douglas," said a friend, "you 
will be a Surrey Shakespeare ! " "A sorry Shakespeare," 
he replied. 

Activity in playwriting was doubled, for Jerrold 
now was in request at all the theatres. In 1835 ^^ 
had four plays being acted at four London theatres, 
while doing day work as subeditor of "the Examiner," 
and writing for "the Monthly Magazine." In April 1835 
he began to write for "Blackwood's Magazine" and for 
the newspapers. In this year, loss through default of 
a friend, whom he had helped too generously, brought 
Jerrold into difficulty, and he wintered in Paris. In 
that winter of 1835, Thackeray also was in Paris. 
Jerrold and he became acquainted, and when Jerrold 
republished selections from his papers in "Blackwood" 
and the "New Monthly," as "Men of Character,"* in 
1838, Thackeray furnished pictures to them. In 1840 
Douglas Jerrold edited "Heads of the People," a series 
of pen sketches by the artist, Kenny Meadows, with 

* Douglas Jerrold 's "Men of Character" and his "History of 
St. Giles and St. James " are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 329 

written characters by Jerrold, Thackeray, Laman Blan- 
chard, and others. 

In 1 84 1, when Jerrold was at Boulogne, his friend 
Henry Mayhew had projected a weekly comic paper 
to be called "Punch, or the London Charivari." Mark 
Lemon, Gilbert Abbot a Beckett, and Stirling Coyne 
were among the company who joined most actively in 
its production, and the first number appeared on the 
17th of July 1 84 1. Jerrold was asked to join, and 
his first contribution appeared in the second number. 
Mark Lemon, born in i8og, was at first joint-editor. 
He was then, like Jerrold, a busy dramatist. Henry 
Mayhew (born in 1812, and best known for his books 
based on direct inquiry into the condition of "London 
Labour and the London Poor," 1851), presently retired 
from "Punch." Mark Lemon became, and remained 
until his death in 1870, the sole editor. Mark Lemon 
was admirably fitted for the post, with a mind broad as 
his body — he could play Falstaff without stuffing — a 
genial nature, good sense, and no tendency whatever 
to look on himself as chief contributor, he never lost 
sight of Douglas Jerrold's warning that he and his 
staff must spend their wit in aid of the real interests of 
life. For the remaining sixteen years of his life, Jerrold's 
writings associated in "Punch" the keenest wit with 
care for all that was worthiest in life; he aided every 
labour for the raising of society, and lashed with his 
satire all the vices and the vanities by which it is 
degraded. The light humour of Thackeray took part 
in the same war. Maginn joined. Hood contributed 



330 . OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

his "Song of the Shirt." Shirley Brooks, full of 
kindly courtesies, graced wit and humour with the 
good taste that directed all his work. Tom Taylor's 
love of Literature tinged his frequent verse with 
pleasant recollections of the poets. Year after year 
in "Punch" the wit was keen, the humour true. 
Artists of high mark, Richard Doyle, John Leech, and 
others, held their ground beside the writers, and the 
wits were among foremost combatants in the great 
battle of life. John Tenniel set aside other ambition 
and made a place of his own in the History of Art 
as producer, week after week, of cartoons, in which 
one of the best English artists is still joining wit of 
invention to a sustained worthiness of purpose. 

Upon Mark Lemon's death, in 1870, Charles 
Shirley Brooks succeeded him as Editor of "Punch." 
His kindly wit was spent in its service until his death 
in 1874. He was born in 181 5, and left training for 
the law to write plays; reported also to "the Morning 
Chronicle" on the condition of the peasantry in southern 
Russia. He wrote also some good novels.* Tom Taylor, 
the next editor of "Punch," was born at Sunderland 
in 18 1 7. He was educated at the University of 
Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and called 
to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1845. In 1850 he 
was appointed Assistant Secretary, and in 1854 Secre- 
tary, to the Board of Health, which office he held at 
the time of his death in July 1880. Tom Taylor also 

* Shirley Brooks's "Silver Cord" and "Sooner or Later," and 
five novels by Mark Lemon are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



EST THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 331 

held the office of Professor of English Literature at 
University College from 1844 to 1847. He was the 
most successful dramatist of his time. The greater 
number of his pieces were original. He showed skill 
in adapting them to the powers of the actors by whom 
they were to be represented, and they cover the whole 
range of expression, from pathos to the broadest farce. 
With his love of Literature was associated love of art, 
and he was well known among the painters as a genial 
and cultivated critic of their work in columns of "the 
Times." Among his books is one, published in 1865, 
on the "Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds: with 
Notices of some of his Contemporaries, commenced by 
Charles Robert Leslie, R. A., continued and concluded 
by Tom Taylor." Tom Taylor's successor in the 
editing of Punch is Francis Cowley Burnand, born in 
1837, ^^^ educated at Eton and Trinity College 
Cambridge. He also has been a very successful writer 
for the stage, and must already have made, with un- 
failing good humour, more jokes than Thomas Hood, 
although he has not written a "Bridge of Sighs" or a 
"Song of the Shirt." 

In the spirit that Douglas Jerrold put into "Punch" 
he wrote for it until within ten days of his death. Li 
1844 he contributed to it "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain 
Lectures," followed by "Punch's Complete Letter 
Writer." In 1843 he founded and edited "the Illu- 
minated Magazine," which lived two years, and con- 
tributed to it "Chronicles of Clovernook." In 1845 
followed Douglas Jerrold's "Shilling Magazine," in 



332 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

which he wrote "St. Giles and St. James" showing 
with all his wit and earnestness "what man has made 
of man." In 1851 he followed the way of publishing 
a novel in monthly numbers, which had been estab- 
lished by the success of Pickwick, in "the Man made 
of Money," a pleasant working out of the fancy that 
a man really made of money, who could peel at will a 
banknote from his person, would not be suffered to 
grow stout in this world of ours, as we have made it. 
In 1852, Jerrold's position, as a foremost wit who had 
throughout his life been labouring for the advance- 
ment of the people, caused an offer to be made to 
him of a thousand a year for his services as editor of 
a penny newspaper "Lloyd's Weekly News," designed 
for widest diffusion. He accepted that trust, and made 
worthy use of his opportunity. Douglas Jerrold died 
in June 1857 leaving, like Hood, a son behind him to 
maintain in Literature the credit of his name. His 
flashes of social wit are still remembered and told 
again. The sharpest sayings were those levelled in 
good humour at friends who knew the kind heart 
underneath the playful malice, for Jerrold was essen- 
tially gentle and highminded. To the young men who 
gathered about him in his home, he would quote often 
for kindly encouragement Wordsworth's wise phrase: 
" Tlain living and high thinking,' " he would say; 
"make that your motto." 



IN. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. ^^' 



CHAPTER XL 
ONWARD BATTLE. 

Of Carlyle's articles in the "Edinburgh Review" 
Macaulay wrote to the Editor, "As to Carlyle, he 
might as well write in Irving's unknown tongue at 
once." Carlyle's insight into Macaulay was implied 
once in his advice to an invalid, to read "the last 
volume of Macaulay's History, or any other new novel." 
The great charm of Macaulay's writing lies, indeed, 
in a faculty akin to that of the novelist. The follow- 
ing passage is from a journal kept by his sister Mar- 
garet, "I said that I was surprised at the great ac- 
curacy of his information, considering how desultory 
his reading had been. *My accuracy as to facts,' he 
said, T owe to a cause which many men would not 
confess. It is due to my love of castle building. The 
past is in my mind soon constructed into a romance. 
. . . . Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a 
man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary. 
A slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance 
in my romance. Pepys's Diary formed almost inex- 
haustible food for my fancy. I seem to know every 
inch of Whitehall. I go in at Hans Holbein's gate, 
and come out through the matted gallery.' " This habit 
of realizing history to his imagination, which Macaulay 



334 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

had from childhood and which strengthened with use, 
was aided by the absence of all qualities that could 
have interfered with it. He had no depths, except his 
depths of home affection in a genial, happy honest 
nature. He read eagerly, remembered easily, wove 
together pieces of his reading with rare cleverness 
into clear conceptions, till he saw in his own mind 
men of the past living and acting, almost heard them 
speak; and then he reproduced his own perceptions 
in words that required no thinking to understand. 
Beyond this, it might almost be said that Macaulay 
did not think. Lights and shades of truth, reserva- 
tions, subtle questionings, perceptions of the mysteries 
of life in men and nations, never troubled him. He 
read pamphlets by the thousand to produce his history; 
he made the most careful inquiries upon little points 
that must be cleared up to secure full sense of life- 
like movement to his narrative; and thus it is no 
dead picture that he paints. There must be an un- 
dying charm in work so done by such a man; never- 
theless its strength lies in the quality that caused 
Carlyle to recommend to an invalid "the last volume 
of Macaulay's History, or any other novel." If the 
stream ran clear it was shallow, and to the multitude 
the History was good because it put scenes of life 
into their minds without requiring them to think much 
as they read. The view taken of any man or in- 
cident was habitually that which accorded with the 
writer's predilections and which could most readily 
take shape in his own imagination. Complaints founded 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 335 

Upon the historian's misreading of facts were many. 
In 1 86 1 Mr. John Paget gathered five of the most 
conspicuous into a book called "the New Examen," 
after Roger North's "Examen" of White Kennett's 
History. 

Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," published in 
1842, are full of the life and heat of the old ballad 
style, true ballads, with quick perception, clear reali- 
zation, a full sweep of animated verse accordant to 
each story; and they are all story, as they ought to 
be. In 1843 Macaulay's Essays in the Edinburgh 
Review were republished by himself"^ In July 1847, 
after a dissolution of Parliament, Macaulay was re- 
jected at Edinburgh for his generous advocacy of a 
grant to the Irish Roman Catholic College at Maynooth. 
He had been giving divided allegiance to Politics and 
Literature, but he now resolved to make a pure pursuit 
of Literature the pleasure and the duty of his life. 
He expressed his feeling in some lines written on the 
night of the defeat, in which he pictured the Fairy 
Queens of Gain, Fashion and Power visiting him, as 
he lay newborn in his cradle at Rothley Temple, and 
passing by with scorn; but dwelt on the blessing of 
the glorious Lady with the eyes of light and laurels 
on her brow. It is the most thoughtful and real of all 
Macaulay's pieces of verse, and has great interest as 
genuine expression — marred only by two rhetorical 

* Lord Macaulay's ''History," his "Critical and Historical 
Essays," his "Lays of Ancient Rome," his "Speeches," and his 
* ' Biographical Essays ' ' are in 20 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 



336 . OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Stanzas about "Thule's winter" and "the tiger's lair" 
— of deep and noble feeling at a turning point of life. 
The conception of the poem is based upon memory 
of a piece by his old friend Praed, entitled "Child- [ 
hood and his Visitors." In 1848 appeared the first 
two volumes of Macaulay's "History of England from 
the Accession of James II." Its success was enormous 
and immediate. In July 1852 Macaulay was re-elected 
for Edinburgh. Towards the close of 1855 the third 
and fourth volumes of the History appeared. A cheque ii 
for d^ 20,000 represented his share of the profits of( 
the History in 1856. In August 1857 he accepted the 
offer of a peerage and became Baron Macaulay of 
Rothley. He died on the 28th of December 1859, ^^^^' 
ing a fifth volume of the History to be published after j 
his death. The affection he inspired colours delight 
fully the sketch of Lord Macaulay's Life published in \ 
1876 by his nephew, George Otto Trevelyan. This is, 
indeed, one of the best biographies to be found in the : 
Literature of the present reign. * 

Thomas Love Peacock, who was born in 1785 andl 
died in 1866, was in his earlier years a friend ofi 
Shelley's, and obtained in 1 8 1 8 an appointment in the 
India House. He left verse-writing for pure fiction, 
beginning with "Headlong Hall" in 18 16. After long 
rest upon a reputation for his wit and fancy as a 
satirist, he produced "Gryll Grange" in 1861, at the 

* "The Life and Letters of Macaulay" by G. O. Trevelyan are 
in four volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection, which contains also 
two volumes of "Selection from the Writings of Lord Macaulay." 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 337 

age of 76, and published in the following year a trans- 
lation of "Gr Ingannati," a Comedy performed at 
Siena in 1531, which had been cited in 1602 for its 
resemblance to Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." 

The novelists between thirty and forty years old 
at the beginning of the reign were — Robert Bell and 
Catherine Crowe, 37; Charles Lever, 34; Benjamin 
Disraeli, ;^t,; William Harrison Ainsworth and Edward 
Lytton Bulwer, ;^2; Samuel Warren, 31. Robert Bell, 
born at Cork in 1800, came to London in 1828 after 
editing a newspaper in Dublin, and until his death 
in 1867 worked in London to good purpose as an 
energetic man of letters. He began by editing a paper 
called "the Atlas," and gave it a distinctly literary 
tone. He afterwards edited other journals, wrote for 
"Lardner's Cyclopaedia" several volumes of History 
and Biography, wrote three Comedies, "Marriage" in 
1842, "Mother and Daughter" in 1844, and "Temper" 
in 1845; two novels, "The Ladder of Gold" in 1850, 
and "Hearts and Altars" in 1852; and a "Life of 
Canning" in 1846. He also planned and executed 
an "Annotated Edition of the English Poets" in half 
crown volumes, well printed upon good paper, each 
poet's works being prefaced with a biographical and 
critical introduction and interpreted throughout, where 
necessary, by free annotation. This enterprise was 
begun in 1854, long before the conception of the ad- 
mirable "Globe" editions through which Messrs. Mac- 
millan publish their well edited cheap volumes of 

0/ English Literature. 22 



338 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the English classics. Robert Bell lived the vigorous 
and healthy life of a true man of letters who left 
the world something the better for his having lived 
in it. 

Catherine Crowe was born in 1800, and as Cathe- 
rine Stevens married Lieut. Colonel Crowe in 1822. She 
began work as a writer in 1838, with a published 
tragedy, "Aristodemus." As novelist she made her 
first success with "Susan Hopley," since turned into a 
melodrama that has won much favour on the stage. 
"Lily Dawson" followed in 1847; ^^^^ Y^^^ she 
translated "the Seeress of Prevorst," and, turning 
to studies of the supernatural in which her fancy 
took delight, she produced in 1848 "the Nightside of 
Nature." In subsequent books Mrs. Crowe followed, 
but not exclusively, this path of fancy, and she died 
in 1876. 

Charles James Lever, born in Dublin in 1806, took 
the degree of Bachelor of Medicine in Trinity College 
Dublin , and of Doctor of Medicine at Gottingen. In 
the first year of the reign of Victoria he began to 
write in "the Dublin University Magazine" an Irish 
novel, full of high spirits and suggestions of practical 
jokes, called "the Confessions of Harry Lorrequer." 
Lever was for three years physician to the British 
Embassy at Brussels, and held that office when he 
produced his next novel "Charles O'Malley, the Irish 
Dragoon" in 1841. From 1842 until 1845 he edited 
the Magazine in which he had made his first success. 
Afterwards he held various posts abroad; and poured 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 339 

out novel after novel, well flavoured with dashing 
military adventure and Irish fun * He died at Trieste 
in 1872. 

Benjamin Disraeli, born on the 21st of December, 
1804, son of Isaac D'Israeli who wrote the "Curiosities 
of Literature," died Earl of Beaconsfield in April 1881, 
after shaping for himself, by the vigour of his own genius, 
as leader of one of the two great parties in the state, 
a large place in the History of England. Political satire 
abounds in his novels, of which the earliest, read by 
the light of his later achievements, shadow forth some 
of the dreams that grew to substance as he grew to 
power. His first novel "Vivian Grey" appeared in 1826; 
"Captain Popanilla" followed in 1828. Then came 
"the Young Duke;" "Contarini Fleming;" "Alroy;" and 
in 1834 "the Revolutionary Epic." In the present 
reign his chief novels were "Henrietta Temple" and 
"Venetia," 1837; "Coningsby," 1844; "Sybil," 1845; 
"Tancred," 1847; "Lothair," in 1870 and "Endymion," 
in 1880.**' He published also a tragedy, "Count 
Alarcos," in 1839, ^ "Political Biography of Lord 
George Bentinck," in 1852, and edited his father's 
works in 1858. 

William Harrison Ainsworth, eldest son of a Man- 
chester lawyer, was born in 1805, educated at the 
Manchester Grammar School, and at first bred to the 



* Charles Lever's Novels are in 59 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 

** Lord Beaconsfield's Novels are in 1 7 volumes of the Tauch- 
nitz Collection. 



34^ ^F ENGLISH LITERATURE 

law. He published a Romance , "Sir John Chiverton/^ 
before he was of age, married at 21 a publisher's; 
daughter, and made Literature his one profession after 
the success of his novel of "Rookwood," published in 
1834. "Crichton" followed in 1837, ^^^ ^^ ^^le be- 
ginning of the Reign Ainsworth had taken his position 
firmly as a novelist. In 1840 he succeeded Charles. 
Dickens as editor of "Bentley's Miscellany," owing ; 
that position to the great success of his novel of: 
"Jack Sheppard," which began to appear in the Mis- 
cellany in January 1839, with illustrations by George 
Cruikshank. The novelist was hardly answerable for 
the manner in which his work was dramatised for 
most of the minor theatres, and received in that form 
by the ignorant. It was said of his book that it made 
house-breakers, as it was said of Schiller's first play 
that it made robbers. Mr. Ainsworth's next subjects . 
were "The Tower of London," 1840; "Old St. Paul's," 
and "Guy Fawkes," 1841; "the Miser's Daughter," 
1842; "Windsor Castle," 1843; "St. James's, 1844; 
"James II.," 1848; "Lancashire Witches," 1849, and 
many more, the series being continued till the present 
day, when William Harrison Ainsworth is a novelist 
aged 78, still true to his own chosen form of art. His 
novels, though readers have turned now to tales of an- 
other fashion, have never been without the merit of 
great skill in the shaping of a story from historical 
material well studied and understood. Ainsworth's 
strength has lain in the union of good, honest anti- 
quarian scholarship with art in the weaving of 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 34 1 

romance that is enlivened and not burdened by his 
knowledge of the past. * 

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, afterwards 
Lord Lytton, was the son of General Bulwer, and his 
mother was heiress of one of the Lyttons of Knebworth 
in Hampshire. He graduated at Cambridge in 1826, 
began to publish when he was fifteen, but obtained 
his first success in 1827 with a novel called "Pelham, 
or the Adventures of a Gentleman." The success was 
followed up. Other tales succeeded rapidly; "the Dis- 
owned" in 1828; "Devereux" in 1829; "Paul Clif- 
ford" in 1830; "Eugene Aram" in 1832. Paul Clif- 
ford was a sentimental highwayman, and Eugene 
Aram a sentimental murderer; but if these novels sug- 
gested question, they were followed by two of entirely 
healthy sentiment, "the Last Days of Pompeii" in 
1834, and "Rienzi" in 1835. I^ 1^37 followed 
"Ernest Maltravers," and in 1838 its sequel, "Alice, 
or the Mysteries." Thus at the beginning of the reign 
the writer then familiarly known as Bulwer was firmly 
established in the first rank of the living novelists. 
The rise of Charles Dickens, in 1836, and the great 
popularity soon afterwards acquired by fiction of an- 
other school, would have drawn away large numbers 
of Bulwer's readers, had he been less versatile. But 
in 1838 he broke new ground and produced an acted 
play, "the Lady of Lyons," that in spite of artificial 
sentiment, and a plot turning upon an unmanly 

* Ainsworth's Novels are in 53 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection, 



34^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

fraud, touched the old chord of revolutionary sentiment 
and, by help of clever dramatic construction, set it 
vibrating again. "The Lady of Lyons" has held the 
stage throughout the reign. "Richelieu" followed in 
the next year, a play hardly less successful. "Richelieu" 
has also kept the stage. Then followed "the Sea 
Captain," and in 1840 "Money," a comedy; also 
novels, — "Night and Morning," "Zanoni," "the Last of 
the Barons," — all successes. Then followed satire in 
verse, "the New Timon," with no great success; a 
novel "Lucretia" of which the tendency was open to 
question; and, in 1849, "^^^ Caxtons" a novel with 
a complete change of method to the use of humour 
imitated from the style of Sterne. About the same 
time an ambitious attempt was made upon Epic 
poetry, with "King Arthur" for theme and an entirely 
new set of allegorical adventures in place of the old 
story. There were more books than these, and to 
the last the literary energy was working."^ Bulwer 
entered Parliament in 1832 and was one of the first 
and chief opponents of what were called the Taxes 
upon Knowledge. He obtained a baronetcy in 1838; 
succeeded to the Knebworth estates in 1844, and 
took the name of Lytton; was raised to the peerage, 
as Lord Lytton, in 1866; and died in 1872. Bulwer 
was married in 1827 to an Irish lady who separated 
from him and satirized him in a novel called 
" Cheveley." 

* Bulwer 's Works are in 58 volumes of the Tauclinitz Col- 
lection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 343 

His son, Robert, the second Lord Lytton, who was 
Governor General of India under the administration 
of Lord Beaconsfield and was raised in 1880 to 
an Earldom, has distinguished himself in Literature 
under the name of "Owen Meredith." Beginning in 
1855 with "Clytemnestra" and other Poems, followed 
by "the Wanderer" in 1859, ^ novel in verse "Lucile" 
in i860, and other volumes, of which the "Chronicles 
and Characters," published in 1868 are the most im- 
portant, the second Lord Lytton has taken a place of 
honour among living verse-writers. Without his father's 
versatility of power, he has much more than his father's 
gift of song. "^ 

An elder brother of Bulwer's, Sir Henry Lytton 
Bulwer, who was active in the diplomatic service, 
was raised to the peerage in 1871 as Lord Balling, 
and died in 1872, also obtained distinction as a 
writer. ** 

Samuel Warren, born in 1807 in Denbighshire, the 
son of a Rev. Dr. Warren, was educated at the 
University of Edinburgh and turned from the study 
of Medicine to that of Law. He became Queen's 
Counsel, Recorder of Hull, and Master in Lunacy; 
wrote legal books; and died in 1877. ^^ ^^^ ^^" 
ginning of the reign Samuel Warren published, in 



* Poems by Robert, Lord Lytton, are in 4 volumes of the 
Tauchnitz Collection. 

** Lord Balling's "Historical Characters," in 2 volumes, and 
his "Life of Palmerston," in 4 volumes are in the Tauchnitz Col- 
lection. 



344 C)F ENGLISH LITERATURE 

1838-40, a series of tales or sketches of life called 
"the Diary of a late Physician" which first appeared 
in "Blackwood's Magazine." In this there were touches 
of pathos; and there was comic power in his very suc- 
cessful novel "Ten Thousand a Year," which followed 
in 1 84 1. "Now and Then," in 1848, sustained the 
author's credit; but in 1851 the opening of the Great 
Exhibition suggested a rhapsody of neither prose nor 
verse called "the Lily and the Bee" that showed how 
a clever novelist with a good sense of the ridiculous, 
and a clear headed lawyer to boot, may make himself 
ridiculous by failing to see the limits of his power. * 

There were not many poets among the writers 
who were between thirty and forty years old at the 
time of her Majesty's accession. Human powers are 
called forth by the conditions of the life about them. 
Those conditions are to the mind and character of 
man in the days of his youth as soil to seed. Seed 
that would yield a Milton might possibly fall on stony 
places by the wayside, or on ground so poor that the 
weak growth barely suggests the strength and beauty 
of the shoot that elsewhere, "bore a bright golden 
flower, but not in this soil." It is not worldly prosperity 
that gives the required conditions. Adversity often 
helps better to that stirring of the depths which must 
come to a man in his youth if he shall be in later 
years a man indeed. Happy the man so born that 
he passes from childhood to maturity, through times 

* Samuel Warren's three Novels, and also his "Lily and the 
Bee," are in the Tauchnitz Collection, 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 345 

in which all faculties are awakened by keen private 
or public struggle, towards some aim for which he 
cares, and ought to care, with his whole soul. Under 
such conditions the great periods of Literature have 
always been produced. The golden time of our modern 
Literature, early in the Nineteenth Century, we owe, 
in all its forms, to stir of the French Revolution 
quickening the minds of men. England, in the time 
of George IV., was a field with its last harvest cleared, 
becoming overrun with weeds, and waiting for re- 
newal of the discipline of plough and harrow. Plough 
and harrow came. Expansion of thought and en- 
largement of the bounds of energy by development of 
the railway system after 1829; the whole stir as- 
sociated with the new French Revolution of 1830; 
the English Reform Bill of 1832; the energetic efforts 
towards better education of the People, and better 
care of the poor; abolition of slavery in the British 
Colonies in 1834; tumults of thought raised by the 
Chartists in 1838; the Anti- Corn -Law -League in 
1839; O'Connell's Repeal agitation; Famine in Ire- 
land; Father Mathew's apostleship of Temperance; 
the French Revolution of 1848, deepening throughout 
Europe every feeling that was associated with the 
social struggles of the time, these indicate only a few 
furrows that broke up the hardening soil, and prepared 
it for a better crop of writers in those who were be- 
tween twenty and thirty years old at the beginning of 
the reign. Tennyson, Gladstone and Charles Darwin, all 
of like age, were then eight and twenty; Mrs. Browning 



34^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

was of about the same age; Browning and Thackeray 
were six and twenty; Dickens was five and twenty. 

The best poetry produced by writers of the pre- 
ceding decade of years was dramatic. Henry Taylor, 
born at Durham in 1800, entered the Colonial-Office 
in 1824, was a friend and disciple of Southey's, had 
already at the beginning of the reign won high re- 
putation as a poetical dramatist, earned by his 
"Isaac Comnenus," in 1832, and more especially by 
his larger dramatic poem, "Philip van Artevelde," in 
1834. 1'^is was dedicated to Southey, and in its 
preface advocated union of reason with imagination 
against poetry that, like Byron's, painted, Henry Taylor 
said, selfish passions of men in whom all is vanity, or 
poetry shaped by the more powerful and expansive 
imagination of Shelley, whose disciples he called fol- 
lowers of the Phantastic School. "Philip van Artevelde" 
remains its author's master-piece. It has one clear 
conception embodied in two plays full of a sedate 
dignity and beauty, is poetic in conception and construc- 
tion, and not without a touch or two of pathos in the 
equable and noble strain of a music that is not strongly 
emotional. Henry Taylor's dramatic works in the 
reign of Victoria have been "Edwin the Fair," in 
1842, "the Virgin Widow," in 1850, and in 1862 
"St. Clement's Eve," with its scene laid in mediaeval 
France. Sir Henry Taylor was knighted in 1873 for 
his services at the Colonial-Office. 

A somewhat older writer, Thomas Noon Talfourd, 
born at Reading in 1795, the son of a brewer, be- 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 347 

came a distinguished lawyer, and wrote three poetical 
plays that were illustrated by the genius of Macready, 
the chief actor of their day. The first was the best, 
"Ion," first acted in May 1836. At the beginning of 
the reign Macready was endeavouring to establish the 
poetical drama at Covent Garden Theatre, and Tal- 
fourd's second play, "the Athenian Captive," again 
upon a great classical theme, came to him in 1838 as 
a disappointment, for it wanted, he thought, stage 
effect, and did not give chief prominence to his own 
part. The poet had to alter the play much before 
its production, but he afterwards printed it with his 
original close. 

The living dramatists upon whom Macready chiefly 
depended in his Covent Garden management were 
Bulwer, Talfourd and Sheridan Knowles. Bulwer's 
"Lady of Lyons" and "Richelieu" and Talfourd's 
"Ion" then first declared them dramatists. James 
Sheridan Knowles, an older man, who was born at 
Cork in 1784 and died in 1862, had been known to 
Macready since 1820. In that year the MS. of "Vir- 
ginius" w^as sent to him by a friend at Glasgow, with 
account of the success of the play at the Glasgow 
theatre. The play was then produced at Covent 
Garden, with Charles Kemble and Miss Foote among 
its actors, as well as Macready, who delighted in the 
part of Virginius, and to whom Sheridan Knowles be- 
came thenceforth a dramatic poet laureate. Although 
his style as a poet was but weakly imitative of our 
elder drama, Sheridan Knowles had skill in the con- 



348 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

struction of his plots, and that quick sense of stage 
effect which gratifies an actor who must needs think 
of the figure he will make upon the stage. Knowles's 
" William Tell " had been written ini 8 2 5 . " The Hunch- 
back" was produced in 1832, and another very suc- 
cessful comedy, produced under Victoria, was "the 
Love Chase," in the first year of the reign. Talfourd's 
third play, "Glencoe," was shown to Macready by 
Charles Dickens as work of a stranger, accepted on its 
merits, and acted at the Haymarket Theatre in 1840. 
The name of the author was withheld also from the 
public until after the play had succeeded. This was 
designed as a suggestion to the unacted dramatists, 
who were then loudly complaining of neglect. 

The most remarkable instance of the influence of 
the Elizabethan drama on the minds of men who were 
looking back to the old vigorous Literature of the 
days before the Commonwealth, was a wildly poetical 
play called "Death's Jest Book, or the Fool's Tragedy," 
by Thomas Lovell Beddoes, which was published in 
1850, after the death of its author, and followed by 
his "Poems" in 1851. The play might almost have 
been written by John Webster or John Ford, and in 
this respect it differs greatly from the modern Eliza- 
bethanism of Sheridan Knowles and others. Its author 
was the eldest son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes of Clifton, 
the early friend of Humphrey Davy, and his mother 
was a sister of Maria Edgeworth's. T. L. Beddoes was 
born in 1803, educated at the Bath Grammar school, 
the Charterhouse and Pembroke College Oxford, and 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 34Q 

showed when a student intense interest in the poetic 
drama. Having graduated at Oxford, he studied 
physic for four years at Gottingen. He lived chiefly 
abroad, most in Germany and Switzerland, and died 
in January 1849. 

Tn the first years of the reign of Victoria the stage 
had in Mr. James Robinson Planche a delightful writer 
of brilliant extravaganzas, fairy pieces with grace of 
invention and treatment, and with ingenuity and beauty 
in the manner of presentment. Mr. Planche is des- 
cended from one of the French protestant families 
that came to England after the Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes. He was born in 1796, and wrote 
the first of his extravaganzas at the age of twenty- 
two. It was produced at Drury Lane Theatre in the 
year 18 18. Mr. Planche distinguished himself also as 
a student of ancient life and manners, whose antiquarian 
knowledge, joined to his good taste, made him a 
valuable counsellor upon all points of dramatic costume. 
He was created Rouge Croix Pursuivant of Arms, in 
1854, and Somerset Herald in 1866. He has wTitten 
nearly two hundred pieces, edited Fairy Tales, written 
upon antiquities, and produced a valuable "Dictionary 
of British Costume," published in 1880. 

Adelaide Kemble, younger daughter of Charles 
Kemble, who achieved in the earlier years of the reign 
of Victoria high reputation as a singer, left the stage in 
1843, upon her marriage to Mr. Sartoris. In 1847 she 
contributed to the Literature of the reign a pleasant 
volume cailed "A Week in a French Country House." 



350 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

John Anthony Heraud, born in 1799, was in his 
earlier years a busy man of letters and published in 
1830 and 1834 two epic poems, "the Descent into 
Hell" and "the Judgment of the Flood." He has 
since written several tragedies in blank verse of which 
one, "Videna," was acted in 1854. 

Richard Hengist Home, born in 1807, began life 
as a sailor, saw service in war between Mexico and 
Spain, visited Indian tribes of North America and 
had many adventures before he settled in London as 
a writer. His work has often indicated high poetic 
power. Poets have felt the force and beauty of his 
"Death of Marlowe" published in 1838, and his 
"Orion" deserves a place in Literature upon higher 
ground than that it is an epic poem which was pub- 
lished in 1843 at the price of a farthing, to express 
its author's sense of the public estimation of such 
Literature. 

Charles Swain, who was born in 1803, and died 
in 1874, began life in dyeworks at Manchester, but 
joined afterwards a firm of engravers. He had skill 
as a lyric poet, and many of his songs, written to aid 
the progress of society, were current among the people. 
"There's a good time coming, boys," was once a refrain 
of his common throughout England. It was a good 
time coming for which they were to "wait a little 
longer"; and we battle for it yet. 

Thomas Cooper, known as "the Chartist," was 
born in 1805, at Leicester. He taught himself Hebrew, 
Greek, Latin, and French, while working at a shoe- 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 351 

maker's stall; then he became schoolmaster. He was 
a Chartist leader at Leicester in 1841, and in 1842 
was sentenced to two years' imprisonment on a charge 
of sedition. In gaol he wrote his poem "The Pur- 
gatory of Suicides," published in 1845, and afterwards 
he wrote both prose and verse; novels, political articles 
and poems bearing on the condition of the people. He 
lectured also in many places, preached, and battled 
against the loss of religious faith that spread among 
working men. Thomas Cooper's "Autobiography," pub- 
lished in 1872, gives, from a point of view most in- 
teresting to the student of our time, a picture of no 
small part of the onward battle in which true English- 
men of every rank and every form of opinion now are 
combatant. 

George Borrow, of Cornish family, was born at 
East Dereham in 1803. He began active life articled 
to a solicitor at Norwich, and there he became 
interested in the language and manner of the gipsies 
who camped on a neighbouring heath. He gave up 
Law for Literature, and after 1833 travelled, for the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, in Russia and Spain. 
In 1 84 1 he published an account of the gipsies in 
Spain, "theZincali;" and in 1842 "the Bible in Spain." 
The author's spirit of adventure, with earnestness of 
character and genuine enthusiasm for studies of gipsy 
life and language, that had its source partly in sense 
of the picturesque, made these books very delightful. 
Mr. Borrow has since travelled among gipsies of 
Eastern Europe, and has published other books; 



352 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

"Lavengro," in 1851; "the Romany Rye," in 1857; 
also "Romano Lavo-Lil, a word-book of the Romany, 
or English Gipsy Language," in 1874.. 

The students of our past History and Literature 
who were between thirty and forty at the beginning 
of the reign, were Alexander Dyce, Sir Frederick 
Madden, the Earl of Stanhope, Mr. William John 
Thorns and Mr. Charles Roach Smith. Mr. Dyce, 
born at Edinburgh, in 1798, was the son of a general 
officer in the East India Company's service. He was 
educated in the Edinburgh High-School and at Exeter 
College, Oxford. He was ordained, held curacies in 
Cornwall and Suffolk, and in 1827 settled in London, 
where his knowledge of Italian as well as of English 
Literature, and his true sense of poetry, obtained for 
him the first place among students of the Elizabethan 
Drama. He qualified himself for his place as the 
best editor of Shakespeare's text by editing the works 
of George Peele in 1829, of John Webster in 1830, of 
Robert Greene in 1831, of Thomas Middleton in 1840, 
of Beaumont and Fletcher in 1843-46. The first 
edition of Dyce's Shakespeare appeared in 1857. -^^ 
1864 ttie second edition gave the results of continued 
study in fuller revision of the text. Ripe judgment 
and thorough familiarity with all forms of Elizabethan 
thought enabled the editor to be a little bolder in 
correction of those errors in the old printed texts 
which he had, at first, not ventured to touch. Dyce 
died in February 1864, leaving much material ready 
for the next revision of his work, and the publication 



IN THE REION OF VICTORIA. 353 

of a third edition of his Shakespeare in 1874, includ- 
ing all his latest notes, was due to the generous care 
of his friend John Forster. We have in Dyce's edi- 
tion that which is now generally accepted as— ^thus 
far — the best attainable text of the Shakespeare's 
Plays.* 

Sir Frederick Madden, born in 1801 and knighted 
in 1833, became keeper of the MSS. in the British 
Museum in the year of Her Majesty's accession. Of 
many pieces of old English Literature first edited by 
him from their MSS. the most important was that of 
Layamon's "Brut," in 1847; ^^ was the first editor 
also of other works of high interest, the Romances of 
Havelok, the Dane, in 1828; William and the Wer- 
wolf, in 1832; and Sir Gawayne, in 1839. ^^^ Frederick 
Madden died in March 1873. William John Thoms, 
born in 1803, began active life as a clerk in the 
Secretary's Office at Chelsea Hospital. He published 
in 1828 a valuable collection of the "Early English 
Prose Romances;" of Robert the Devil, Friar Bacon, 
Vergil the Enchanter, Doctor Faustus, and others. Of 
this work there was an enlarged second edition in 
1858. One of the best of many services for which 
students of English Life and Literature are indebted 
to Mr. Thoms was his foundation in 1850 of "Notes 
and Queries," a medium of intercommunication 
through which literary men can have full aid of 
fellowship in their research. He was himself editor 

* Dyce's text of Shakespeare is in 7 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 

Of Ejtg-Hsh Liieratii7e, 23 



354 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of his journal until 1873, and it still lives and thrives, 
being not only an important aid to research, but, by- 
its nature, also an amusing miscellany of curious in- 
formation for those who seek in it intellectual enter- 
tainment. Mr. Thoms has distinguished himself by 
pleasant attacks upon faith in the duration of life to 
a hundred years or more. The only malice of the 
world towards him lies in its hope that he may live to 
see the happy completion of his own hundredth year 
on the 1 6th of November 1903. 

Charles Roach Smith, who was born in 1804, at 
Landguard Manor in the Isle of Wight, has distinguished 
himself as an explorer and interpreter of local anti- 
quities. He published from 1848 to 1866 six volumes 
of "Collectanea Antiqua;" from 1850 to 1858 books 
on the Antiquities of Richborough, Reculver and Lymne, 
and in 1859 "Illustrations of Roman London." He has 
been lately interested in the discovery of a Roman 
Villa at Brading in his native island. Mention should 
here also be made of the antiquarian writings of the 
Rev. John CoUingwood Bruce, born at Newcastle in 
1805, whose work on "the Roman Wall; a Description 
of the Mural Barrier of the North of England," first 
published in 1851, reached a third edition in 1867. 
In a large volume, amply illustrated, it supplies the 
most exhaustive treatment of its subject. 

The historians of this decade of years, were 
Macaulay, Lord Mahon afterwards Earl Stanhope, Sir 
George Cornewall Lewis, Eyre Evans Crowe, and 
Thomas Henry Dyer; to whom may be added Abraham 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORS. 355 

Hayward and John Doran as writers of lively gossiping 
essays upon the past. 

Philip Henry Stanhope, Earl Stanhope, first 
known as historian under his earlier title of Lord 
Mahon, was born in 1805 and educated at Christ 
Church, Oxford. He entered the House of Commons 
in 1830, was Under-secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs in 1832, and for a year, in 1845-6, he was 
secretary to the Board of Control. He published in 
1829 a "Life of Belisarius," in 1832 a "History of the 
War of Succession in Spain;" in 1836-38 his chief 
work, "History of England from the Peace of Utrecht," 
followed in 1872 by a "History of the Reign of Queen 
Anne," which was designed to form a link between 
Lord Macaulay's History and his own.* "Historical 
Essays" in 1848, and "Miscellanies" in 1863 con- 
tained Earl Stanhope's contributions to Reviews. He 
published also in 1845 "the Life of the Great Conde," 
in 1853 "the Life of Joan of Arc," in 1861-62 "the 
Life of William Pitt," and took part with Edward 
Cardwell in the "Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel," published 
in 1856. In 1846 he had edited the letters of Lord 
Chesterfield, and in that year he was elected to the 
Presidency of the Society of Antiquaries. Earl Stan- 
hope died in December 1875. 

Sir George Cornewall Lewis, born in 1806, was 
the son of Sir Thomas Frankland Lewis, a baronet of 
an old Radnorshire family. He was educated at 

* Earl Stanhope's Histories are in 9 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 



356- OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Eton and Oxford, and first entered the service of the 
country as one of a Commission appointed in 1831 to 
consider the state of the Irish Church and of the 
Irish People. From 1839 ^^ ^^47 ^^ was Chief Com- 
missioner of Poor Laws. In 1847 ^^ entered Parlia- 
ment and became Secretary to the Board of Control. 
In 1848 he was Under Secretary of the Home De- 
partment, and in 1850 Secretary of the Treasury. 
In 1854-55 he edited "the Edinburgh Review." 
After 1855 Sir George Cornewall Lewis served in the 
highest offices of the State, first as Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, then as Home Secretary, in 1858-9. He 
was Secretary of State for the War Department, when 
he died in April 1863. He was a keen critic of 
historical traditions, and applied a clear calm mind 
with scientific accuracy to questions of the past and 
present. In 1832 he published "Remarks on the Use 
and Abuse of Political Terms," in 1840 "an Essay on 
the Romance Language," and "a Glossary of Hereford- 
shire Provincial Words;" in 1841 "an Essay on the 
Government of Dependencies," in 1849 "^^ ^^^ I^^" 
fluence of Authority in Matters of Opinion," in 1852 
two volumes on "Methods of Observation and Reason- 
ing in Politics," in 1855 two volumes of "Inquiry into 
the Credibility of the Early Roman History," remorse- 
lessly demolishing its legends; in 1862 "an Historical 
Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients." His "Essays 
on the Administrations of Great Britain from 1783 to 
1830" were published after Sir G. C. Lewis's death 
by Sir Edmund Head, in 1864; and they were followed 



jN iHK kkj(,;n oL' victoria. 357 

in 1870 by his "Letters to Various Friends" edited 
by his brother, the Rev. Sir G. F. Lewis. 

Eyre Evans Crowe, born in 1799, was an active 
political journalist, Avho at one time edited "the Daily 
News." In 1830 he contributed "a History of France" 
to Lardner's Cyclopaedia. During many of the last 
years of his life, which closed in 1868, he lived in the 
neighbourhood of Paris, for access to French records 
while he was developing his "History of France" into 
a fuller work, founded on careful study of authorities. 
It was published in five octavo volumes between 1858 
and 1868, and, unambitious in style, it is the most 
liberal, careful and trustworthy "History of France" 
that has been written by an Englishman. 

Thomas Henry Dyer, born in 1804, published in 
1 86 1 "a History of Modern Europe;" in 1865 "a 
History of the City of Rome;" and in 1873 "Ancient 
Athens;" besides other useful historical works. Abra- 
ham Hayward, born in 1803, was trained to the law 
and became in 1845 a Queens' Counsel. He has 
produced a prose translation of Goethe's "Faust" that 
has been widely read, has written upon Law, and 
founded "the Law Magazine," and has published three 
series of "Biographical and Critical Essays," being 
distinguished among Quarterly Reviewers for light and 
lively articles abounding in literary anecdote. Mr. 
Hayward published also in 1861 "the Autobiography, 
Letters and Remains of Mrs. Piozzi," and in 1864 
"Diaries of a Lady of Quality." John Doran, born 
in 1807 of an old family from Drogheda, received 



358 OP ENGLISH LITERATURE 

part of his education in France and Germany, was 
Ph. D. of a German University, and commonly known 
as Dr. Doran. He was an active man of letters, 
journalist and author, and was pleasantly esteemed for 
books on various forms of the social life of the past. 
They had usually whimsical titles and were crowded 
with much anecdote. His first books were his best, 
upon Dining and Tailoring, "Table Traits and Some- 
thing on^ them," and in 1854 "Habits and Men." 
Then followed "Lives of the Queens of the House of 
Hanover" in 1855; "Knights and their Days," in 1856; 
"Monarchs retired from Business" in 1857; "a History 
of Court Fools" (the best part of its contents being 
borrowed without proper acknowledgment from Flogel's 
"Geschichte der Hofnarren") in 1858; "Lives of the 
Princes of Wales" in i860; "a Memoir of Queen 
Adelaide" in 1861; "Her Majesties' Servants," talk of 
the past days of the English Stage, in 1864; "Saints 
and Sinners" in 1868; "A Lady of the Last Century" 
(Mrs. Elizabeth Montague), with a Chapter on "Blue 
Stockings" in 1873. Dr. Doran died in 1878. 

Science was represented among men of this group 
by Sir George Biddeli Airy, Richard Owen and the, 
mathematician, Augustus De Morgan. George Biddeli 
Airy, born in Northumberland in 1801, was Senior 
Wrangler at Cambridge in 1823 and obtained a 
Fellowship at Trinity in 1824. In 1826 he was ap- 
pointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and in 1828 
Plumian Professor of Astronomy, with charge of the 
Cambridge Observatory. In 1835 ^e became Astro- 



IN TTTE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 359 

nomer Royal. That office he held throughout the 
reign of Victoria until his resignation in 1881, and 
retirement upon a substantial and well earned pension. 
His researches have been honoured by medals from 
the French Institute, the English Royal Society and 
Astronomical Society. He was among the contributors 
to Charles Knight's Penny Cyclopaedia, and he has 
written treatises for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, 
besides the records of research contributed to the 
Cambridge Transactions, the Philosophical Transac- 
tions and the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical 
Society. 

Augustus De Morgan, born in Southern India in- 
1806, was fourth wrangler at Cambridge in 1827. 
In 1828 he became the first Professor of Mathematics 
in University College, then opened as the University 
of London. He was not only the most successful 
teacher, but the most learned authority of his time 
upon the history of Mathematics, and in the practice 
of his science a most acute pleader for the union of 
Mathematics with Logic. He wrote books upon every 
department of Mathematics, and was conspicuous for 
union of shrewd critical wit with good sense and a 
wide erudition. This was shewn in the "Budget of 
Paradoxes," contributed from time to time to "the 
Athenaeum." He died in March 1871 and his "Para- 
doxes" were reprinted as a volume in 1872. Of De 
Morgan's ready liveliness in talk let this serve as ex- 
ample. Dr. Sharpey, the veteran physiologist, was 
talking in the College Common Room of old days be- 



360 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

fore the Anatomy Act, when body snatchers provided 
subjects for Anatomists and Surgeons. He had as a 
young man to receive the supply for his teacher. A 
rival teacher turned informer. — At once De Morgan 
broke in with a new version of an old song, 

" If a body need a body 
Surgery to teach, 
If a body prig a body, 
Need a body peach?" 

Richard Owen, born at Lancaster in 1804, was 
educated at the University of Edinburgh, and at 
schools of medicine in Paris. He began life with the 
practice of medicine, but appointment to the post of 
Assistant Curator of the Hunterian Museum developed 
his inclination for the study of Comparative Anatomy. 
After teaching at St. Bartholomew's medical school, he 
became in 1836 Professor of Anatomy and Physiology 
in the College of Surgeons. This office he held for 
twenty years, and then he was made Superintendent 
of the Natural History Departments in the British 
Museum. Professor Owen's Lectures on Comparative 
Anatomy were first published in 1843; his "History of 
British Fossil Mammals and Birds" in 1846. In 1849 
he published a work on "the Nature of Limbs" dwell- 
ing upon the unity of design throughout creation, and 
in 1855 a Lecture "On the Classification and Geo- 
graphical Distribution of the Mammalia, with an Ap- 
pendix on the Gorilla, and the Extinction and Trans- 
mutation of Species." This discussion prepared the 
way for Charles Darwin's reasonings, in 1859, upon 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 36 1 

"the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selec- 
tion." In i860 Professor Owen published his "Palae- 
ontology, or a systematic summary of Extinct Animals, 
and their Geological Relations." Among other works 
that followed was one, m 1866, on "the Anatomy of the 
Vertebrates." Another, in 1877, was on "The Fossil 
Mammals of Australia, and on the extinct Marsupials 
of England." 

There is to be included among writers born within 
this decade of years, Walter White, Assistant Secre- 
tary to the Royal Society, who has published many 
pleasant books describing holiday walks. In 1855 
it was "a Londoner's Walk to the Land's End;" in 
1858 "a Month in Yorkshire;" in 1859 "Northumber- 
land and the Border;" in i860 "All Round the 
Wrekin," and so forth; encouraging wise Englishmen 
to know their homes while not avoiding knowledge 
also of their neighbours; other of Mr. White's books 
being records of holidays in Switzerland, the Tyrol, 
Saxony, Bohemia and Silesia. 

Richard Chenevix Trench, born in 1807, and now 
Archbishop of Dublin, held a living in Hampshire 
when he became known by a volume of good verse, 
"Justin Martyr, and other Poems." His religious writ- 
ings have since been marked by refinement of taste, 
and some short courses of lectures upon the use of 
English, addressed to boys, have been given with great 
advantage to the public. "The Study of Words," 
published in 1852, "English Past and Present," in 
1855, "Select Glossary of English Words used formerly 



302 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in Senses different from their Present," in 1859, ^^^ 
suggestive little books that have passed through many- 
editions, and are still freely used. Dr. Trench was 
Dr. Buckland's successor as Dean of Westminster from 
1856 to the end of 1863, when he succeeded Dr. 
Whateley in the Archbishopric of Dublin. 

John Stuart Mill was thirty-one years old at the be- 
ginning of the reign. He was born in London in 1 806, 
eldest son of James Mill, and instructed by his father, 
who, says the son, "in all his teaching demanded of 
me not only the utmost I could do, but much that I 
could by no possibility have done." John Stuart Mill 
began Greek at the age of three. Children's books 
he seldom saw, but he read through the historical part 
of the first thirty volumes of "the Annual Register." 
The boy had a sensitive mind, and fresh shoots of 
imagination that dried up for want of culture. He was 
told to read the historical plays of Shakespeare, for 
their facts, and he went on to others for their poetry; 
but he was put upon a severe course of Logic at the 
age of twelve. It began with Aristotle's Organon, with 
which were to be taken the whole or parts of several 
of the Latin treatises on the Scholastic Logic. Upon 
them followed the "Computatio, siveLogica" ofHobbes, 
and he studied much in his father's "History of Lidia," 
which was first published in 1818, when the boy was 
twelve years old. Towards religion James Mill's atti- 
tude was what he considered logical, and he taught 
his son to look upon the modern as on the ancient 
religion as something that in no way concerned him. 



IN THE RKTHN OF VICTORIA. 363 

"This point in my early education," wrote J. S. Mill, 
"had, however, incidentally one bad consequence de- 
serving notice. In giving me an opinion contrary to 
that of the world, my father thought it necessary to 
give it as one which could not prudently be avowed 
to the world." For passionate emotions of all sorts, 
James Mill professed the greatest contempt. "He 
resembled," says his son, "most Englishmen in being 
ashamed of the signs of feeling, and by the absence 
of demonstration, starving the feelings themselves." 
After such education, John Stuart Mill followed his 
father's steps in the East India House, and rose, after 
^;^ years service, from a clerkship to the post his 
father had held as chief. This was in 1856. He had 
married in 1851, and suffered deeply upon his wife's 
death in 1858. "Her memory," he wrote in his "Auto- 
biography" (published after his own death in 1873) 
" is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard 
by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I en- 
deavour to regulate my life." The control of the East 
India Company over India was transferred to the 
Eritish Government in 1858. John Stuart Mill was 
offered a seat in the new Council, but he preferred to 
retire upon the compensation granted him and give 
the rest of his life to his studies. He died in May 
1873. The impulses of a fine nature, that his father's 
heavy and one-sided training weakened indeed but 
could not kill, give frequent charm to the disquisitions 
of John Stuart Mill. First came, from the mind thus 
trained, a "System of Logic" in 1843; then "Principles 



364 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of Political Economy," early in 1848, a second edition 
being called for within the year. In 1859-67 followed 
three volumes of "Dissertations and Discussions" chiefly 
from the "Edinburgh" and "Westminster" Reviews. 
"Considerations on Representative Government," 1861; 
"Utilitarianism," 1863; "Auguste Comte and Positiv- 
ism," 1865; in the same year "Examination of Sir 
William Hamilton's Philosophy" and in 1869 "the 
Subjection of Women," a plea for the full political and 
social rights of women, are the most important of 
J. S. Mill's other books. In the "Autobiography," 
published after his death, Mill indicates through all 
his tenderness, sincerity and truth, and his strong in- 
terest in questions that touched the well-being of man, 
a poetic temperament that had been starved in the 
training. There is almost pathos in his account of the 
great comfort he found in the poetry of Wordsworth, 
with the supposition that he owed it, not to sympathy 
with the high thought and purpose of the poet, but to 
the fact that he was not himself poetical. "Words- 
worth," he said, "may be called, the poet of unpoetical 
natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. 
But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require 
poetic cultivation." His father, in fact, had not suc- 
ceeded in stamping all poetry out of him. Carlyle 
expected of John Stuart Mill, when he was a young 
man, that he would prove a mystic. 



TN THF. RFJr.N OF VTCTORTA. 365 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE BEST VIGOUR OF OUR TIME; AND WHAT REMAE^S 
OF IT. 

Next comes the ninth wave, "gathering half the 
deep, and full of voices," that is breaking now upon 
our shore of time, while the new waves that roll up 
behind it must grow yet before we know their force. 
The best vigour of our time is in writers who were 
between twenty and thirty years old at the beginning 
of the reign. To their group belong Tennyson and 
Browning; Mrs. Browning; Dickens and Thackeray; 
the Miss Bronte's; Mrs. Gaskell; Gladstone; Darwin; 
and others who represent activity in many forms. 

Charles Dickens was born on the 7th of February 
18 1 2, at Landport in Portsea, son of John Dickens, a 
clerk in the Navy Pay Office, who was then stationed 
at Portsmouth Dockyard. He was the second of eight 
children, of whom two died in infancy. In 1 8 1 4 his 
father's duties were transferred to London, and in 
1816 to the dockyard at Chatham, where the family 
lived in St. Mary's Place next door to a Baptist 
Chapel. Coming once from Chatham with his father 
he passed Gad's Hill Place, admired it, and was told 
that he might live in it if he came to be a man and 
should work hard enough. It was a pleasure to him, 



366 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

in after years, to bring this prediction to fulfilment. 
At Chatham, Charles Dickens went to a day-school in 
Rome Lane. His father had a cheap series of the 
works of novelists and essayists — Fielding, Smollett, 
"the Vicar of Wakefield," "Don Quixote," "Gil Bias," 
"Robinson Crusoe;" the "Spectator," "Tatler," "Idler," 
"Citizen of the World," and Mrs. Inchbald's collection 
of Farces. These furnished pasture ground, and 
Charles Dickens took, as a boy, to writing, produced 
a tragedy "Misnar, Sultan of India" founded upon one 
of the "Tales of the Genii." A cousin, James Lamert, 
son of a Commander in the Navy, with his widowed 
stepmother, sister to Mrs. John Dickens, was part of 
the household at Portsea and Chatham. At Chatham 
Mrs. Lamert married a staff doctor in the army. He 
is sketched in Pickwick. James Lamert, who was 
being educated at Sandhurst, had a taste for the 
stage, got up private theatricals, and took his young 
cousin to the theatre. In 1820-21, during the last 
two years at Chatham, Dickens was at a school in 
Clover Lane, kept by the Rev. W. Giles, of the Baptist 
Chapel next door. In 182 1, the family came to London 
and lived in Bayham Street, Camden Town. James 
Lamert had finished his education at Sandhurst, and 
was waiting for a commission. Dickens, having been 
brought to London, found friends in a godfather who 
was a well-to-do rigger, mast, oar and block maker 
in Limehouse, and in an elder brother of his mother's, 
James Barrow, who was laid up with a broken leg at 
lodgings in Gerrard Street, Soho, over a bookseller's 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 367 

shop kept by a widow, from whom books were bor- 
roAved. 

In 1822 John Dickens, who had retired on a small 
pension, was in difficuUies. Mrs. John Dickens set up 
a school in two parlours of an empty house at 4 Gower 
Street, North, with some hope that Charles's godfather, 
credited with an Indian connexion, might bring pupils. 
The education of John Dickens's own children was, 
meanwhile, neglected, except that the eldest daughter 
was sent to the Academy of Music. After a few 
months John Dickens was arrested for debt, and 
lodged in the Marshalsea prison. Everything was sold 
and pawned, including the books. James Lamert — • 
still waiting for the commission, which he resigned, 
when it came long afterwards, to a younger brother — 
about this time joined a cousin George, who had some 
money, in setting up an opposition to Robert Warren's 
much advertised Blacking shop at 30, Strand. A 
Jonathan Warren had traded on the name which in 
those days was to be read on most of the walls in Eng- 
land, and sold "Warren's Blacking" at "30 (Hunger- 
ford Stairs) Strand," printing a very minute "Hunger- 
ford Stairs" between big "30" and big "Strand." 
George Lamert bought Jonathan Warren's business, 
and went into it with his brother James. Charles 
Dickens, then ten years old, was employed in the 
business to cover blacking pots, and received for his 
services six shillings a week. His home was broken 
up; his mother had gone to live with his father in the 
Marshalsea; and the boy was put to lodge with an 



368 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

old lady in Little College Street, recollections of whom 
are in the character of Mrs. Pipchin in "Dombey and 
Son." He had to keep himself out of his wages; moved 
presently to lodgings near the Marshalsea, in Lant 
Street, Borough, (home of Mr. Bob Sawyer in "Pick- 
wick,") taking breakfast and supper in the prison. 
There the family was still waited upon by a small 
maid of all work first taken from Chatham workhouse, 
the original of "the Marchioness" in "the Old Curios- 
ity Shop." John Dickens took the benefit of the Act that 
cleared him as a bankrupt. About the same time the 
blacking business of the Lamerts had been removed 
to Chandos Street, Covent Garden, at the Corner of 
Bedford Street, and little Charles Dickens had been 
put into the window that the public might get an im- 
pression of extensive business from the sight of his swift 
tying of the blacking pots. John Dickens then quar- 
relled with the Lamerts, took his son away, and sent 
him, in 1824, to school. He was in 1824-26 at two 
private schools before he was put into business as 
office boy at an attorney's. 

In 1828 John Dickens had become a parliamentary 
reporter. His son Charles then followed his lead, de- 
voted himself to a close study of shorthand in the 
reading room of the British Museum, acquired skill, 
and practised for two years as reporter for an office in 
Doctor's Commons. In 1831, aged nineteen, he was 
reporter for "the True Sun," and it was here that he 
first formed his friendship with a young journalist of 
his own age, John Forster, who remained his life-long 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 369 

friend. In 1832, Dickens's uncle Barrow started a 
"Mirror of Parliament" that was to excel Hansard in 
reporting the debates. Charles Dickens reported for 
it, during two years, and then the speculation failed. 
In January 1834 Dickens became reporter for "the 
Morning Chronicle" under John Black, a genial and 
energetic editor. He contributed street sketches also 
to a magazine "the Old Monthly," which could not 
pay for them. In August 1834, "^ "^^^ Old Monthly," 
he first signed himself "Boz." That was the domestic 
pet name of his youngest brother Augustus, who had 
been named after Moses in "the Vicar of Wakefield," 
then had his Moses turned into Boses, and his Boses 
into Boz. In 1835 "^^^ Evening Chronicle" was started 
as an offshoot from "the Morning Chronicle," and 
Mr. George Hogarth, musical critic of "the Morning 
Chronicle," was active in its preparation. Dickens was 
asked to supply an original sketch for the first number, 
like his street sketches in "the Old Monthly." He 
supplied it, and proposed a series, with hope of pay 
for it that might be added to his salary as a reporter. 
This was arranged, and his salary was raised from five 
to seven guineas a week. The sketches in "the Evening 
Chronicle" were signed "Boz," and were much liked. 
In 1836, Dickens's age being 22^ the First Series of 
"Sketches by Boz" was published as a volume, and 
the copyright sold to a young publisher for ^^ 1 50. At 
the same time there was a proposal by George Seymour, 
a comic artist, who amused himself and others a good 
deal at the expense of cockney sportsmen, to produce 

Of English Literature. 24 



370 - OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

a series of comic plates. The publishers of the pro- 
posed series, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, looked for an 
amusing writer of pen sketches that might be attached 
to them, and they applied to the lively author of 
"Sketches by Boz." Dickens suggested that the new 
Sketches written by him for Seymour's pictures should 
have some continuity, however slight, and it was agreed 
that this could be obtained by forming comic characters 
into a club. Thus came into existence the "Posthumous 
Papers of the Pickwick Club," of which No. i ap- 
peared on the 31st of March 1836. On the second of 
the following April, Dickens married the eldest daughter 
of his friend George Hogarth, drawing from "Pickwick" 
one month's pay in advance for wedding expenses. The 
payment was to be ^15 for each number. Between 
the appearances of No. i and No. 2, Seymour committed 
suicide; pictures were indispensable, and Thackeray, 
then an art student, offered to supply them. The artist 
chosen was Hablot Browne, who signed himself "Phiz." 
By the time the sixth number was reached, there was 
much talking about "Pickwick," in which a new writer, 
a man of genius, with high spirits that cheered all 
readers, was revelling in wit and whim. There was 
little or no plan in the book; that had not been part 
of the original design; but, story or no story, in 1837, 
at the beginning of Her Majesty's reign, there was 
"Pickwick." It is said that when the delight in "Pick- 
wick" was at its height, a ponderous divine, who had 
been giving counsel at the bedside of a dying man, 
heard as he left the room his victim sigh, "Thank' 



LN THIO REIGN OF VICTORIA. 37 I 

Heaven, there will be another 'Pickwick' in three days!" 
In August 1836 Dickens had agreed with Richard 
Bentley, the publisher, to edit a magazine for him, 
"Bentley's Miscellany," and write a tale in it. The 
tale was "Oliver Twist," begun in February 1837, ^^^ 
aided greatly by George Cruikshank as an illustrator. 
Dickens's fame had risen so rapidly that the young 
publisher who gave £ 150 for the "Sketches by Boz" 
asked £ 2000 for the surrender of his bargain. Pay- 
ments agreed upon for extra sale brought up the price 
of "Pickwick" to £ 2,500; and for the next novel, 
published, like "Pickwick," in twenty green-covered 
monthly numbers, the price was ^^ 1 50 a number, with 
reversion of copyright to the author in five years. 

In 1840 and 1841 Dickens attempted weekly publi- 
cation of his "Master Humphrey's Clock" which con- 
tained, besides short stories, "the Old Curiosity Shop," 
one of the best of his novels, and "Barnaby Rudge." 
A visit to America yielded in 1842 "American Notes." 
In 1843 he produced a five shilling Christmas story, 
daintily printed and illustrated with woodcuts and 
coloured plates, "The Christmas Carol." This was a 
new form of pleasure; and as the successful novels 
in monthly numbers set many producing novels in 
monthly numbers, so the successful Christmas book, 
set many producing Christmas books of the same 
outward pattern. Dickens continued the practice only 
through the next four years, publishing in 1844 "the 
Cricket on the Hearth;" in 1845 "the Chimes;" in 
1846 "the Battle of Life;" and in 1847 "^^^e Haunted 

24* 



372 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Man.'' His longer tales, always first told in twenty- 
monthly numbers, were "Martin Chuzzlewit," in 1844, 
"Dombey and Son," in 1848, and "David Copperfield," 
in 1850. 

In 1845 Dickens's energy led to the establishment 
of an important newspaper "The Daily News." The 
prospectus of it was written by him; its first number, 
which appeared on the 21st of January, 1846, was 
edited by him; and he remained editor until the 
gth of the next month. In aid of this venture he had 
begun to write impressions of Italian travel, and he 
continued to contribute, after the editor's work had 
been transferred, for the rest of the year, to his 
friend Forster. The volume of "Pictures from Italy" 
appeared in 1846. 

In 1850 Dickens established "Household Words''"^ 
as a weekly journal that was to join reason with 
imagination in support of every effort towards the 
improvement of society. There were to be tales, 
sketches, poems, always designed in aid of right 
citizen-building. He would help one half of the 
world really to know how the other half lived. This 
was putting to high use the wide spread influence he 
had acquired. He gathered about him, as fellow 
workers, all whom he thought able and found ready 
to aid his design. "Household Words" prospered until 
1859, when its sale was doubled by continuing it as a 
new series under a new name, "All the Year Round." 

* Household Words, 185 1- 185 6, is in 36 volumes, and Stories from 
Household Words are in 1 1 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REICJN OF VICTORIA. 373 

Since Charles Dickens's death this journal has been 
successfully continued by his son, whose name also is 
Charles Dickens. In Christmas numbers of his weekly 
journal containing tales connected by some little frame- 
work of his own devising, some of the best of Dickens's 
own short stories were written; but he ceased to pro- 
duce Christmas numbers when imitation on all hands 
took away their freshness of design. 

In 1852 was published "the Child's History of 
England," written originally for "Household Words." 
The conception of the book was an honest one — to 
sweep away historical conventions and reach un- 
sophisticated truth — but the execution of it required 
much knowledge in which Dickens was deficient. 
''Bleak House" was the next novel, in twenty numbers. 
It was completed in 1853. In 1854 "Hard Times" 
was republished from "Household Words." Then 
"Little Dorrit" appeared in the usual twenty numbers, 
completed in 1855. In 1859 Dickens's powerful story 
of the days of the French Revolution, "the Tale 
of Two Cities," was published in "All the Year 
Round." In the same journal appeared also the 
papers collected as "the Uncommercial Traveller," and 
the novel of "Great Expectations," finished in 1861. 
"Our Mutual Friend" returned to the old twenty 
number form, and was finished in November 1865; 
Dickens had added to his labours the public dramatic 
reading of selected portions of his works. Whatever 
he did was done wdth his whole energy. In 1867 he 
revisited America, and after his return planned "Edwin 



374 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Drood" which was to be completed in twelve instead 
of twenty monthly numbers. Only six had appeared, 
and the rest was unwritten, when a sudden seizure, with 
effusion on the brain, brought the great novelist's life 
to a close on the 9th of June 1870, at the age of fifty- 
eight* Thackeray had already passed away. 

William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta 
on the 1 8th of July 18 11, of a family of Indian Civil 
Servants. His father died in 18 16, and his mother 
was married a few years afterwards to Major Henry 
Carmichael Smith. Thackeray was sent as a child 
from India for education in England, and placed at the 
Charterhouse. He was not particularly happy there, 
but his gentle nature looked back afterwards on his 
old school with growing affection. In February 1829 
he went to Trinity College Cambridge, and left in 1830. 
An inclination towards studies of Art took him abroad. 
In 1 83 1 he was at Weimar. In 1832 he was at Paris, 
when he came of age and came into possession of 
a^ 500 a year. He still studied among the painters, 
half aimlessly, with a genius that must needs in due 
time make Literature his calling, but with his future 
business in life ill defined. In a few years he had 
got rid of his money, by cardplaying and newspaper 
speculation. The loss was gain to him. At the be- 
ginning of the Reign of Victoria, in 1837, ^^^ chief in- 
come was from "Fraser's Magazine," to which he contri- 
buted, in 1837-38, "the History of Samuel Titmarsh and 

* Charles Dickens's Novels are in 48 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 375 

the Great Hoggarty Diamond/' and he was writing also 
in the "New Monthly." In 1837 Thackeray married. 

His eldest daughter, now Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, 
has inherited some part of his genius, and is one of 
the most delightful of our living novelists, gifted with 
delicate invention, charm of thought and grace of 
style.* 

Thackeray was in those days much in Paris. In 
1840 he published his "Paris Sketch Book," and in 
1843 his "Irish Sketch Book," having in the interval 
become an active contributor to "Punch," then just 
founded. Thackeray's playful humour had free range 
in the pages of "Punch." There was a dainty spirit 
of fun in his satire and his comic ballads, with a 
humour all his own. In 1844 he published another 
little book "a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo." 
In 1846, emulous perhaps of the success of Dickens, 
and strong in the growing sense of power, Thackeray 
followed Dickens's plan of publishing a long novel in 
monthly numbers and began "Vanity Fair." It was 
finished in 1848, in 24 numbers, and then for the first 
time he made known the full breadth of his genius. 
Dickens had leapt to fame at the age of 24 and 
strengthened year by year his hold upon the public. 
Thackeray slowly developed to the full expression of 
his power and was 37 when he took his place with 
the great English novelists by right of "Vanity Fair." 
In 1849 ^^ ^^^ ^^ illness which left him subject to 

* Miss Thackeray's (Mrs. Ritchie's) Novels and Tales are in 
1 1 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 



376 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

those occasional attacks of spasm in one of which he 
at last died. In 1850 "Pendennis" followed "Vanity 
Fair," still published in monthly numbers. In 1851 
Thackeray delivered lectures at Willis's Rooms on 
"the English Humourists;" and in the winter of 
1852-53 he lectured in America. The profit from 
lecturing enabled Thackeray to make all requisite 
provision for his family. In coming thus into direct 
relation with his readers, Thackeray preceded Dickens, 
who first thought of public readings in 1846, but, 
although he gave some gratuitous readings in and 
after December 1853, did not begin the paid readings 
until 1858. In 1853 Thackeray produced "the New- 
comes," and prepared a second series of Lectures on 
"the Four Georges." These proved not less profitable 
than the lectures on the "English Humourists." In 
1854 Thackeray published "Esmond," one of his 
best novels, illustrating life in the days of Queen 
Anne, which was artistically coloured by making per- 
sons of the drama tell their story in an English imi- 
tating English of the days of Addison and Steele. 
Steele appeared in the story, a man little understood by 
Thackeray, the merit of whose accounts of the English 
Humourists does not lie in full knowledge of the men 
he tells about. In 1857-59 appeared the "Virginians," 
a sequel to "Esmond." He was forty-eight years old 
when he completed the "Virginians," and in the same 
year "the Cornhill Magazine" was founded by Messrs. 
Smith and Elder, with Thackeray for Editor. It was 
immediately preceded by "Macmillan's Magazine," 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 377 

first published a month earlier than "the Cornhill." 
These two magazines were designed to give for a 
shilling, which replaced the old conventional half 
crown, a monthly supply of the best Literature attain- 
able. "The Cornhill" added pictures to letter press, 
and secured illustrations from some of the best English 
artists, including John Everett Millais, Frederick Walker, 
and the present President of the Royal Academy, Sir 
John Leighton. Thackeray was editor of the Magazine 
until April 1862, and continued to write for it until 
his sudden death, on the 24th of December 1863. 
He had published in the Cornhill "the Roundabout 
Papers," "Lovel the Widower," and "the Adventures 
of Philip," and left behind him a fragment of a novel, 
"Denis Duval," which appeared in "the Cornhill 
Magazine" at the beginning of 1864.* 

In their lifetime many vain comparisons were 
drawn between Dickens and Thackeray. They were 
the great novelists of their day, and novel readers 
took sides in dispute about them, after the usual way, 
by exalting one and running down the other. Dickens, 
with little aid of school education in his early years, 
and in much contact with the lower forms of life, had 
the energy of genius strengthened, and its sympathy 
deepened, by a youth of battle against adverse cir- 
cumstance. The strong will conquered, and the strong 
will showed its force until the end. A vigour im- 
patient of all check set itself face to face with the 

* Thackeray's Works are in 36 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 



378 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ills Of life, and spent the gifts of a rare genius 
in strenuous service to humanity. The work of such 
a writer must inevitably show, at times, some traces 
of the want of early culture. To the fastidious, Charles 
Dickens would at times, often perhaps, seem vulgar, 
and his generous emotions would also, at times, out. 
run his judgment. But brilliant playfulness of fancy 
in a man of genius, whose very defects of conventional 
training belonged to a childhood and youth brought 
into close contact and victorious struggle with the 
meaner life that was about him, and who drew from, 
such education only a more vivid sense of social needs,! 
and keener sympathies with those who are forced to 
fight the battle with less strength to overcome, cannotj 
be vulgar. Extravagance in the play of whimsical li 
suggestion, closer sympathy with the lives of the teni 
million than with the lives of the ten thousand, can- 
not be vulgar when the extravagance is unrestrained 
play of an honest wit, in its fellowship with mirth and 
sorrow intensely human, and capable of flashing truth 
upon the world in forms that catch its fancy and can 
touch its heart. The wildest extravagance had some 
touch of that individual character by which humour 
rises above wit, and of which Dickens was brimful, 
the complaint being, indeed, that it ran over the brim.' 
When Thackeray, who had been moved to tears by 
No. 5 of "Dombey and Son," containing the death of 
Little Paul, threw the number on the table at the 
"Punch" office, and said, "Look there; who can stand 
against that?" he knew the strength of Charles Dickens's 



IN THE RETON OF VICTORIA. 379 

senilis as truly as Dickens knew and recognized the 
strength of his. There can be no essential vulgarity 
in a writer who deliberately gives his labour to the 
highest aims in life; who seeks, as Shakespeare did, 
by his fictions to draw men to love God and their 
neighbour and to do their work, and who, as strenu- 
ously as he had done his own work, sought to put 
heart into every irresolute toiler and encourage him 
to battle on. It is said that Dickens erred in writing 
novels with a purpose." What does that mean? 
Purposeless work is not for the sane. What is meant 
must be that he wrote novels with a wrong purpose, 
that he built their plots upon accidental questions of 
the day and not upon essential truths that are the 
same to-day and for ever. In "Bleak House," for ex- 
ample, he attacked the delays of law, and levelled a 
fiction against the Court of Chancery. If that were 
all, the complaint would be a just one; but that is not 
all. Dramatist or novelist must needs construct his 
tale from some form of the life he finds about him, 
although he should base his tale upon some simple 
and essential truth of life. And in "Bleak House" 
what does the Chancery suit stand for? It is the 
something outside a man's life that may at any day 
bring fortune to him, without labour of his own. Such 
hope is a blight upon the life that trusts to it. Richard 
Carstone's life is robbed of its true vigour by such de- 
pendence on the chances of an outward Fortune; while 
Esther Summerson does her daily duty with cheerful 
activity, and Mr. Jarndyce, at Bleak House, much as 



;8o 



OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the suit concerns him, puts its possibilities away fron 
him. He takes no thought about the Hercules whd 
might come down to set his waggon going, but puts 
when needful, his own shoulder to the wheel, and 
lives his own life worthily. "Fortune reigns in the 
gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature." 

Thackeray, on the other hand, was accused ol 
cynicism. He had the early culture of which Dickens 
was deprived, and special training as an artist. This 
gave a grace of refinement to his style, which is onei 
part of its charm. But another part of his charm,i 
and a main part, is that with a fine humour in which^; 
as in all true humour, the whole nature of the writerj 
is involved, Thackeray retained as a man the playful-! 
ness, the simplicity, the tender feeling of a child. In 
playful books, such as "the Rose and the Ring," 
published in 1855, and in his "Ballads," there is, with 
a man's fulness of power, a genuine playfulness, a 
childlike spirit of fun without one trick of affectation 
to cast doubt on its sincerity. But this is absolutely 
incompatible with what the world calls cynicism. Al- 
though his view of life was dimmed a little by ex- 
periences of a public school and of the ways of the 
young artist world in Paris, and he may therefore shake 
his head sometimes over a mother's faith in the goodness 
of her son, although reaction from the weak excesses 
of French Revolutionary sentiment had brought an air 
of cynicism into fashion, Thackeray's ideal of life is 
really childlike in its purity. In "Vanity Fair" he 
took, like Fielding whom he did not study in vain, a 



IN THE REIGN OE VICTORIA. 38 I 

proad canvas on which to paint an image of the world. 
!\s Fielding, in Tom Jones and Blifil, represented 
:he two opposite poles about which our world turns, 
30 Thackeray contrasted Becky Sharp and the Craw- 
ley side of the world with the side of Major Dobbin 
and Amelia. When it was said that his good people 
were innocent babies, that was his praise; for a child- 
like innocence, remote enough from the conception of 
the cynic, was Thackeray's ideal to the last. If Major 
Dobbin seemed too weak, Thackeray mended the 
fault in Colonel Newcome, to whom he gave the 
same feature of unworldly simplicity and innocence. 
Thackeray's sensibility made him, perhaps, a little too 
much afraid of the conscious idlers who consider 
themselves men of the world. Being himself tenderly 
framed, he took refuge like the hermit crab in a shell 
that was not his own but served well for protection. 
He certainly was, in his younger days, somewhat too 
much in awe of the conventions of society; for there is 
an implied bowing down before them in some of the 
Snob papers that is saved only by its honest origin 
from being not conventionally but essentially vulgar. 
Dickens's Letters have been collected, since his death. 
They are in three volumes, two published in 1880 
and one in 1881.* These show that the man spoke 
with his own voice in his works. If like aid to a true 
knowledge of William Makepeace Thackeray should 
ever be given in the days of our children, it will 

* Dickens's Letters edited by his Sister-in-Law and his Eldest 
^X>aughter, are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



382 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE " 

make nothing more clear than the gentleness of thd 
fine spirit from which his novels came. . 

The Life of Dickens by his friend John Forster wa 
published in three volumes in 1872, 3, 4,* and a sketcl 
of the life of Thackeray has been contributed by An 
thony Trollope to a series of short separate biographies 
of "Men of Letters," edited by John Morley. 

John Forster was born at Newcastle in 18 12, and 
was educated there at the old grammar school, now 
pulled down to make room for a new railway station 
He showed his bent towards Literature as a child, and 
as a schoolboy wrote a play that was produced on the^ 
Newcastle stage. He was sent to Cambridge at thei 
time when the new London University was being! 
founded, and transferred from Cambridge to University] 
College, London, where he studied law, under Andrew/ 
Amos, with James Emerson Tennent and James White 
side, afterwards Chief Justice of Ireland, for his most 
intimate friends and fellow students. At eighteen, he 
was writing for magazines and studying in the cham 
bers of an eminent special pleader, Thomas Chitty. 
In the year of the Reform Bill Forster was also writ- 
ing politics in "the True Sun" when Dickens became! 
a reporter for that paper, and their life-long friendship 
then began. 

"The Examiner" newspaper, when it left the hands 
of Leigh Hunt and his brother, had been bought by 
a Rev. Dr. Fellowes, who wished to advocate many 

* Forstei-'s "Life of Dickens" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN" THE REICN OF VICTORIA. 3§3 

reforms and religious toleration as an aid to the 
religious life. In 1830 Dr. Fellowes entrusted the 
management of "the Examiner" to Albany Fonblanque. 
Albany William Fonblanque, born in 1793, was the 
son of an eminent lawyer, and had turned first from 
training for the army to study of law. But at twenty 
he was drawn into Literature by his interest in ques- 
tions of the day, and he soon became a brilliant news- 
paper writer. Between 1820 and 1830, he had written 
for "the Times," "the Morning Chronicle," "the Ex- 
aminer" and other papers, and in 1830, when he was 
entrusted with the editing of "the Examiner" the old 
strength of the journal was renewed. 

John Forster was among writers in "the Examiner," 
and within three years after Albany Fonblanque had 
become its editor, Forster was as his right hand in its 
management. To Dionysius Lardner's " Cabinet Cyclo- 
paedia of Original Works on History, Biography, Na- 
tural Philosophy, Natural History, Arts and Manu- 
factures," published between 1829 and 1846, Forster 
contributed at the age of 24 the first of five volumes 
of the "Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth." 
The last volume appeared in 1839 ^^^ i^ 1840 there 
was a new edition of the whole work. In 1842-43 he 
edited the "Foreign Quarterly Review," he was writing 
also in "the Edinburgh Review," and throughout full 
of activity for "the Examiner," of which he became 
editor in 1847. Fonblanque, who had become, and 
remained, chief proprietor, withdrew then from the 
work of editing, upon his appointment as chief of the 



384 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE \ 

Statistical Department of the Board of Trade. Fon- 
blanque parted with the paper only a little while, 
before his death in 1872, and wrote in it every week 
while it was his. In 1848 John Forster published his 
"Life of Goldsmith," which at once took its place as 
one of the best biographies in English Literature.* 
In September 1854 ^^^ Essay on Foote, and in March 
1855 liis Essay on Steele, appeared in the "Quarterly 
Review." The Essay on Steele was the first serious 
attempt to rescue from misinterpretation one of the 
manliest of English writers. Fonblanque wrote of it, 
"I read your 'Steele' with admiration, not so much 
for the scholarly writing and fine criticism, but chiefly 
for the wise and, because wise, tender humanity." 
Forster had chosen from among the writers of Queen 
Anne's time Jonathan Swift for special study, and 
was during many years collecting materials for a Lifej 
of Swift. In 1855 he withdrew from "the Examiner" 
on being appointed Secretary to the Lunacy Commis- 
sion, and at that time he married. In 1858 his articles 
in the "Quarterly" and "Edinburgh" Reviews were 
published, in two volumes, as "Historical and Bio- 
graphical Essays," one of them including an Essay 
"on the Debates on the Grand Remonstrance." In 
i860 he published a volume containing special study 
of the attempted "Arrest of the Five Members" by 
Charles I. Then he resolved to give his latter years, 
with failing health, to a full reconstruction of his 

* Forster's "Life of Goldsmith " is in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 385 

"Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonweahh" written 
in early life. "The Life of Sir John Eliot" appeared 
accordingly in 1864. The death of his friend Walter 
Savage Landor turned him aside to the writing of a 
"Life of Landor" published in i86g. The death of 
his nearest friend, outside his home, Charles Dickens, 
turned him aside to the fulfilment of an old promise 
that if he survived he would be Dickens's biographer. 
The volumes of this biography, in which Forster lived 
his old life again with his dead friend, appeared in 
1872-4. The death of his friend Alexander Dyce in 
1869 imposed upon Forster another office of love. As 
his own days of faithful labour drew to a close, he 
was producing a third edition of Dyce's Shakespeare; 
also an edition of Landor's works; the last volumes of 
both being edited after Forster's death by another old 
friend, the Rev. Whitwell Elwin. At the beginning 
of 1876 the first volume of Forster's "Life of Swift" 
appeared, containing much new and suggestive matter. 
It remains a fragment. Forster died within a month 
after the book appeared. Ill health had withdrawn 
him in his last years from society, in which he had 
once taken a keen delight; and he had always a 
loud important manner that puzzled strangers and 
amused his friends. But he was full of kindliness. 
No successful man of letters ever used his influence 
more steadily for the prompt recognition of the worth 
of others. Many who now are firm in reputation heard 
the first voice of emphatic welcome to the ranks of 

0/ English Literature . 25 



386 • OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Literature from John Forster in the "Examiner," and 
liked the voice for being loud. He had enthusiasm. 
Some say that enthusiasm has gone out of fashion. 
But the mind can no more live in health without it, 
than the body without fire. 

Enthusiasm gave warmth to the work of the three 
daughters of the Rev. Patrick Bronte, who married 
Maria Branwell and, in 1820, went to live in the 
Vicarage at Haworth in Yorkshire with his wife and 
six children. The children were, Maria, born in 1 8 1 4 
Elizabeth, born in 1815; Charlotte, born in 18 16 
Patrick Branwell, born in 181 7; Emily, born in 18 18 
Anne, born in 1820. The mother died in 182 1, and 
her place was taken by her sister. Miss Branwell, who, 
being afraid of cold, kept much to her own room. In 
July 1824, Maria and Elizabeth were sent to a School 
for Daughters of Clergymen, at Cowan Bridge. Char- 
lotte and Emily followed in September. In the spring 
of 1825 low fever broke out in the school, Maria 
(the Helen Burns of "Jane Eyre") was taken home, 
and died in a few days. Elizabeth, also consumptive, 
was sent home, and died early in the summer. Char- 
lotte and Emily returned to the school after Mid- 
summer, but were removed before the winter. Char- 
lotte was sent, in January 1831, to a school at Roe 
Head, between Leeds and Huddersfield. She left 
school in 1832, sixteen years old, and taught her 
sisters. In 1835 she went for three months to Roe 
Head as a teacher. Emily, sent to school there, be- 
came home sick, and Anne was sent in her place. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 387 

Then Emily went as teacher to a school in Halifox, 
while Anne and Charlotte were in situations. - 

In 1 84 1 there was a project of school-keeping in 
partnership with the Mistress at Roe Head. In 1842 
Charlotte and Emily, to qualify themselves in French, 
went as pupils to the peiisionnat of Madame and Mon- 
sieur Heger at Brussels. In 1843 Charlotte Bronte 
returned to Brussels, as English Teacher, with a salary 
of ^16 a year. Estrangement arose with Madame 
over religious differences. At home the three girls 
and their brother Branwell had lived their own lives 
together from early childhood, little observed by their 
aunt, or by their father who lived chiefly in his study. 
They wove fictions and dreamed dreams, with sensitive 
child natures and a kindred gift of genius in all. But 
now Branwell had fallen out of the little company that 
once looked on him as cleverest and best. He had 
become dissipated. He took opium. And there was 
grief in the girls' hearts. -' 

In 1846 the three girls ventured to print, at their 
own cost, a slender volume of "Poems by Currer, Ellis, 
and Acton Bell," taking a name for each that agreed 
with her proper initials. They could venture also to 
spend two pounds in advertising it. The little book, 
now full of literary interest, had no attention from the 
public. Each of the sisters was also at this time 
writing a novel. Charlotte's tale was "the Professor," 
Emily's "Wuthering Heights;" Anne's, "Agnes Grey." 
They have all been since published, and there is an 
interesting likeness in their differences; thoughts and 

25* 



388 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

experiences common to the three sisters are to be found j 
in all. They had ill fortune among the publishers; 
but Charlotte Bronte fearlessly began another novel. 
This was "Jane Eyre," begun in August 1846, at a 
time when she was lodging in Manchester with her 
father who had gone thither to be operated upon for 
cataract, and when she was nursing her father in the 
dark room to which he was then confined. Next year 
Messrs. Smith and Elder declined "the Professor," a 
novel designed for one volume, in kind terms that 
promised attention to a longer work from the same ; 
hand. In August 1847 Charlotte Bronte sent them \ 
"Jane Eyre." It fascinated two publishers' readers, j 
and then Mr. Smith himself. It was heartily believed I 
in by the firm, and promptly published. The reviewers ; 
gave only doubtful signs of appreciation. Alone, at first, 
John Forster, who knew genuine work when he met 
with it, spoke out in his hearty and decided way. As 
Mrs. Gaskell wrote, in her "Life of Charlotte Bronte," 
"'The Examiner' came forward to the rescue, as far 
as the opinions of professional critics were concerned. 
The literary articles in that paper were always remark- 
able for their genial and generous appreciation of 
merit; nor was the notice of 'Jane Eyre' an exception; 
it was full of hearty, yet delicate and discriminating 
praise." ' 

In the next year, 1848, her brother Branwell 
died, and then her sister Emily. In the following year, 
1849, Charlotte Bronte was left alone, by the death of 
her other sister Anne. These griefs all came upon 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 389 

her while she was writing her second novel, "Shirley," 
which had been begun soon after the publication of 
"Jane Eyre," and was published in 1849. ^^ ^^^is year 
also, the author's name, which Charlotte Bronte had 
succeeded thus far in concealing, became known. 
"Villette," the pleasantest of her books, including re- 
collections of the old school life in Brussels, appeared 
in 1853. In June 1854 Charlotte Bronte married 
Mr. Nicholls, who had been for more than eight years 
her father's curate. On the 31st of March 1855 she 
died. When staying with her kindly publishers she ob- 
served one day the absence of "the Times" from the 
breakfast table, and suspected that it had been put 
aside because it contained an unfavourable review 
of "Shirley" then just published. She persisted in 
desire to see it, found that it condemned her for in- 
delicacy, and, though she hid her face behind the 
ample pages, her tears were to be heard falling on 
the paper. The review was honestly meant, and the 
reviewer was not alone in taking a man of the world's 
view of imaginings that trespassed through the very 
innocence of the lone woman who wrote while brother 
and both sisters were dying by her side. Mrs. Gaskell's 
life of her friend, published soon after Charlotte Bronte's 
death, made all this clear. ♦ 

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, wife of the Rev. Wil- 
liam Gaskell of Manchester, was born in 18 10. She 
was the daughter of the Rev. William Stevenson, and 
spent much of her girlhood with an aunt at Knutsford, 
in Cheshire, of which place memories abound in her 



390 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

"Cranford." She married in 1832, and her first book 
was, in 1848, a novel, "Mary Barton," suggested by 
questions concerning factory labour, which told a tale 
of factory life with blended pathos and humour, and 
with a keen feminine perception of character that won 
for it immediate and great success. Charles Dickens, 
in 1850, when he was establishing his "Household 
Words," looked immediately to Mrs. Gaskell as a fellow 
worker who would touch with fine imagination and 
with depth of feeling the realities of life. More novels 
followed. In 1850 the Christmas tale of "the Moor- 
land Cottage;" in 1852 "Lizzie Leigh, and other 
Tales," that had been written for "Household Words." 
In 1853 followed "Ruth," a novel, and "Cranford" 
republished from "Household Words." "Cranford" is 
a short tale, or series of connected Sketches, represent- 
ing with a delicate and playful humour society at its 
narrowest among maiden ladies and their friends who 
practise elegant economies and seem only to vegetate 
in a small country town. But with the tenderness of 
a true wisdom, the whole impression given is but an- 
other reading of the lesson that "the situation that 
has not its duty, its ideal, was never yet occupied by 
man." "Here in the poor, miserable, hampered actual" 
of Cranford, Miss Matty, with her limited view of life 
and its economies, shaped her ideal. Mrs. Gaskell 
under all her playful humour makes us feel that souls 
may be heroic and poetic with the narrowest sur- 
roundings. "North and South" followed in 1855, 
"the Life of Charlotte Bronte" in 1857; ^^^ among 



IN THE REICN OF VICTORIA. 3gl 

Other books, "Sylvia's Lovers" in 1863. "Wives and 
Daughters," her last novel, was appearing in "the 
Cornhill Magazine," and not quite completed, when 
Mrs. Gaskell died suddenly, while reading to her 
daughter, in November 1865.* 

Let us now pass rapidly along a line of writers, 
most of them yet living, who were twenty or thirty 
years old at the beginning of the reign. Charles Reade, 
a living novelist and dramatist of high mark,** was 2;^; 
Anthony Trollope, another of our old favourites, still 
living, was 22;*'^'^ Marmion Savage, a lively novelist 
of Irish family who died in 1872, began his career 
with a clever sketch of Irish society, "The Falcon 
Family, or Young Ireland" in 1845. In 1847 followed 
"the Bachelor of the Albany," and in 1849 "My Uncle 
the Curate." "Reuben Medlicott, or the Coming Man" 
appeared in 1852, for the first time with the author's 
name upon the title page. A short tale by Marmion 
Savage called "Clover Cottage" was dramatised by 
Tom Taylor as "Nine Points of the Law." 

Elizabeth Missing Sewell, born in the Isle of Wight 
in 181 5, published "Amy Herbert" in 1844, and this has 
been followed by a long series of religious novels, and 



* Mrs. Gask ell's Novels are in 16 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 

** Novels by Charles Reade are in 1 7 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 

*♦* Works of Anthony Trollope are in 79 volumes of the 
Tauchnitz Collection, and also two novels by Thomas Adolphus 
Trollope. S^e page 182. 



392 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

books helpful to the spread of religious education by 
the Church of England * 

Of the Churchmen, Dr. Liddell, Dean of Christ 
Church, still living, was 26; Dr. Colenso, Bishop of 
Natal, still living, was 24. It was in 1863-4 that 
Dr. Colenso produced the "Critical Commentary on 
the Pentateuch" that raised a storm in the Church by 
pointing out discrepancies inconsistent with faith in 
the verbal inspiration, or the single authorship , of the 
Books ascribed to Moses. Henry Alford, Dean of 
Canterbury, who died in 187 1, and edited the Greek 
Testament in sections published between 1 84 1 and 1 86 1, 
was 25 years old; Frederick William Robertson, whose 
Brighton sermons represent the pure spirit of Religion 
freed from all sectarian hatreds, was 21 years old at 
the beginning of the reign and died in 1853.** Arthur 
Penrhyn Stanley, who sustained long battle for the 
advance of civilization in the same good cause, was 20, 
and died as Dean of Westminster, honoured and be- 
loved by all his countrymen in 1881. 

In History there was John Hill Burton, 28 at the 
beginning of the reign. He died in 1880, leaving 
among other books a "Life of David Hume," published 
in 1846, and a "History of Scotland from Agricola's 
Invasion to the Extinction of the last Jacobite In- 
vasion." This appeared in successive volumes be- 

* "Amy Herbert" and five other novels by Miss Sewell are 
in 12 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 

** Four volumes of F. W. Robertson's "Sermons" are in the 
Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 393 

tween the years 1853 and 1870, and is the best 
History of Scotland that has yet been written. There 
was also John Sherren Brewer, born in 18 10, who 
took orders, became Reader at the Rolls, Professor of 
English Literature at King's College, London, and 
died in 1879 soon after presentation to a vicarage in 
Essex. Professor Brewer distinguished himself by 
historical research in many forms, and chiefly as 
editor at the Record Office of the Calendar of State 
Papers for the Reign of Henry VIII. In this labour he 
is succeeded by a younger historian who has done 
sound work of his own, James Gairdner. Historical and 
other papers contributed by Professor Brewer to the 
"Quarterly Review" were published in 1880. Sir 
Edward Shepherd Creasy, born in 18 12, published in 
1 85 1 a popular history of "the Fifteen Decisive 
Battles of the World." He died in 1878. Charles 
Merivale, now Dean of Ely, born in 1808, published 
in 1850-62 a "History of the Romans under the Em- 
pire," and in 1875 a "General History of Rome from 
the Foundation of the City to the Fall of Augustulus." 
Connop Thirlwall, who died Bishop of St. David's in 
1875, and whose "History of Greece" published first 
in "Lardner's Cyclopaedia" (1839-44) was the best be- 
fore Grote's, was but three years younger than Grote. 
He was born in 1797. His History retains its place 
among the best books of the reign. 

Sir Arthur Helps, born in 181 7, ranks as a historian 
for his "Conquerors of the New World and their 
Bondsmen," published in 1848-51, and his "Spanish 



394, OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Conquest in America," which followed it in four 
volumes between 1855 and 1861; but he is perhaps 
best known for his thoughtful essays and dialogues 
upon questions of the time, "Essays written in the 
Intervals of Business," 1841; "Claims of Labour," 
1844; and "Friends in Council," 1847-51* "The 
History of the Five Great Monarchies of the World" 
is among the writings of the Rev. George Rawlinson, 
who was born in 18 15, and is still active. So is Austen 
Henry Layard, born in 18 17, who delighted all readers 
in 1 846 with his account of researches in Nineveh. 

Thomas Wright, who was born in 18 10 and died 
in 1877, supplied readers in the reign of Victoria with 
many valuable studies of past life and Literature. 
He was educated at Ludlow and at Trinity College 
Cambridge, where he graduated in 1834. Already as 
an undergraduate he had begun to write, and he was 
honoured by many learned societies of Europe. He 
was in 1842 and 1856 the first editor in this reign, of 
"the Vision of Piers Ploughman," since edited with the 
most exhaustive care by the present Professor of Anglo- 
Saxon at Cambridge, the Rev. W. W. Skeat. He edited 
also in 1839 "the Political Songs of England from 
John to Edward II;" "the Latin Poems of Walter Map," 
in 1842, and his "De Nugis Curialium," in 1850; 
"the Chester Miracle Plays," and the "Owl and 
Nightingale" in 1843; Occleve's "De Regimine Prin- 

* "Friends in Council" and "Ivan de Biron" by Sir Arthur 
Helps are in 4 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE RETGN OF VICTORIA. 395 

cipum" in i860, and other important pieces of our 
Early Literature; besides giving to the general public 
several useful and amusing books, such as the 
"History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments," in 
1862, and his "History of Caricature," in 1865. 

Peter Cunningham, third son of Allan Cunningham 
the poet, was born in 1816, became a Clerk in the 
Audit office in 1834, ^-nd was Chief Clerk from 1854 
to i860, when he retired. Of many books by him il- 
lustrative of the past, the most widely known was his 
"Handbook of London." He died in 1869. Among 
living students of the ,past there were at the beginning 
of the reign, Edward Augustus Bond, then aged 22, 
now Chief Librarian of the British Museum; Henry 
Octavius Coxe, then aged 26, among whose valuable 
services to English Literature was an edition of 
Gower's "Vox Clamantis" in 1850. He succeeded 
Dr. Bandinel as Chief Librarian of the Bodleian in 
i860, and held that office until his retirement in 1881. 
Samuel Birch, now keeper of the Oriental, Mediaeval and 
British Antiquities in the British Museum, was born 
in 181 3, and has written valuable works in his own 
department of study. Sir Thomas Erskine May, born 
in 18 1 5, should rank rather with the Historians than 
with the Antiquaries, for his "Constitutional History 
of England since the Accession of George III.," a 
continuation of Hallam, published in 1861-63. He 
has written also a work of highest authority upon the 
"Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parlia- 
ment." The present editors of the "Edinburgh" and 



39t) OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

"Quarterly" Reviews, Mr. Henry Reeve and Dr. Wil- 
liam Smith, were young men of twenty-four years old 
at the beginning of the reign; and John Thaddeus 
Delane, who edited "the Times" after the death of 
Thomas Barnes in 184 1, and himself died in November, 
1879, was twenty. 

William Edmonstone Aytoun, who was born in 1 8 1 3, 
became Professor of Rhetoric in the University of 
Edinburgh in 1845, and died in 1865. He produced 
in 1848 his "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," which 
have passed through about twenty editions. His 
"Bon Gaultier Ballads," written^ by Aytoun and his 
friend Theodore Martin, were hardly less popular; and 
when a young poet, Alexander Smith, who had a 
touch of genius injured by overstraining for effect, 
found imitators. Professor Aytoun wrote, in 1854, a 
whimsical parody on the spasmodic style, called 
"Firmilian, a Spasmodic Tragedy." Aytoun married 
the youngest daughter of John Wilson (Christopher 
North), and among his friends was Theodore Martin 
whom he joined in the work of translating the "Poems 
and Ballads of Goethe." 

Theodore Martin, — now Sir Theodore, — born in 
18 1 6, practised law in Edinburgh, and settled to law 
business in London in 1846. He distinguished himself 
by the work done with his friend Aytoun, by metrical 
translation of his own from Horace and Catullus, and 
from German poets. He has translated Goethe's "Faust" 
and Dante's "Vita Nuova," and he has written, by 
Her Majesty's command, from papers and letters placed 



IN THE REION OF VICTORIA. 397 

at his disposal, the "Life of the Prince Consort," of 
which the first vokune appeared in 1874. Of this 
large work, since its recent completion, a People's Edi- 
tion is being issued in five sixpenny parts. Wide as 
is the knowledge of the worth of the laborious and 
earnest man who used the utmost influence of cha- 
racter and position for the well-being of his adopted 
country, yet this closer study of his life deepens the 
prevalent impression.* The reign of Victoria has aided 
life and literature by highest example of a Queen 
who has been at all points womanly, and against whom 
the one complaint of the thoughtless is that she re- 
mains devoted to the memory of a husband in whom 
every Englishman has found a pattern of true manly 
worth. It is well that in such a reign womanhood 
has been w^orthily represented also in our Literature. 
Life speaks through literature with its true voice in 
the works of Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, "George 
Eliot" and Mrs. Browning. The strength of one such 
writer overweighs the weakness of a hundred triflers. 

Monckton Milnes, now Lord Houghton, was twenty- 
eight years old at the beginning of the reign. His 
"Poems" in two volumes were published in 1839; 
"Poetry for the People," in 1840; "Palm Leaves," in 
1844. Other living workers w^ho belong to this group 
of men are John Stuart Blackie, born in 1809, the 
genial Professor of Greek at Edinburgh, who blends 
poetic instincts with his scholarship; Dr. John Brown 

* The Prince Consort's "Speeches and Addresses" are in the 
Tauchnitz Collection. 



39^ OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of Edinburgh, born in 1810, whose "Horae Subsecivae," 
published in 1858-61, contained much good matter 
besides the often reprinted "Rab and his Friends," 
delightful alike to dogs and men, unless dogs cannot 
read.* Martin Farquhar Tupper, author of "Proverbial 
Philosophy," was 27 at the beginning of the reign; 
the Rev. William Barnes, author of "Poems in the 
Dorset Dialect," was 27; Alexander William Kinglake, 
who published in 1844 a delightful book of Eastern 
travel called "Eothen," and has since written a full 
History of the Crimean War, was 26.*"^ Sir John William 
Kaye, who published in 1851 the "History of the War 
in Affghanistan;" in 1853 a book on "the Administra- 
tion of the East India Company," in 1864-70 a "History 
of the Sepoy War in India," and other pieces of Indian 
history and biography, died in 1876. The Rev. Mark 
Pattison, born in 1 8 1 3, now Rector of Lincoln College 
Oxford, and author of a scholarly life of "Isaac Ca- 
saubon," published in 1875, is still busy with useful 
work; and the Regius Professor of Greek at Ox- 
ford, the Rev. Benjamin Jowett, has enriched the 
Literature of the Reign with what will remain the 
standard translations of the Dialogus of Plato (187 1) 
and the History of Thucydides (1881). 

To the same group belongs William Ewart Glad- 
stone, born in 1809, and still most active among the 



* Dr. John Brown's *' Rab and his Friends" is in the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 

** Kinglake's "Eothen" is in one volume and his "Invasion 
of the Crimea" in ten volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 399 

active. Early in the reign, he published (in 1838) a 
work on "the State in its Relation to the Church." In 
1851-1852 he called strong attention in two pam- 
phlets to the arbitrary imprisonment of 20,000 of his 
subjects by King Ferdinand of Naples for political 
reasons. In 1858 he published "Studies of Homer" 
and in 1869 "Juventus Mundi: the Gods and Men 
of the Heroic Age."* 

Charles Robert Darwin has gone farther back for 
the "Juventus Mundi." He was born in 1809, ^^^^ i^ 
on his father's side a grandson of Erasmus Darwin, 
poet physician, and on his mother's side a grandson 
of the great artist potter, Josiah Wedgwood. Charles 
Darwin began by publishing, in 1839, "Researches 
into Natural History and Geology during the Voyage 
of the Beagle." In 1842 his book on "the Formation 
of Coral Reefs" was suggestive of grand operations 
of nature in the work of the small coral builders. 
His next study was of "Volcanic Islands." Then came, 
in 1845, "a Naturalist's Voyage round the World." In 
1859 Darwin published the book that gave a new point 
of departure to scientific thought, "On the Origin of 
Species by means of Natural Selection; or the Pre- 
servation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." 
He had been working at it since the days when 
he was a naturalist on board "the Beagle." Its 
suggestion that the continuity which former naturalists 

* Gladstone's "Rome and the Newest Fashions in Religion," 
"Bulgarian Horrors"; "Russia in Turkestan" and "the Hellenic 
Factor in the Eastern Problem" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



400 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

had observed in the scale of Nature was , in the case 
of animals, produced by gradual development from 
lower into higher forms, appeared to some people an 
argument against belief in a Creator; but it in no 
way interferes with faith in a first cause. In 1862 
followed a work "on the Contrivances by which 
Orchids are fertilized by Insects;" in 1865 another 
"on the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants." 
In 1 87 1 Charles Darwin wrote on "the Descent of 
Man, and Selection in relation to Sex;" in 1872 "on 
the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," 
and his last book, published in 1881, was on "the 
Earth Worm," whose great service is shown as an agent 
employed in the preparation of the earth for man. 
Charles Darwin is a man of genius in the world of 
Science, whose place answers to that of a great poet 
in the world of Literature. 

Of the writers who were between ten and twenty 
years old at the beginning of the reign, Florence Night- 
ingale was seventeen. Of her "Hints on Hospitals," 
in 1859, ^^^ "Notes on Nursing," the result of de- 
voted care of the sick soldiers in the Crimea, more 
than a hundred thousand copies were diffused. Miss 
Charlotte Mary Yonge was fourteen. She published 
in 1853 "the Heir of Redclyffe," and, like Miss Sewell, 
,has been since generously busy in using her pen, as a 
novelist and otherwise, in aid of religion and religious 
education.* James Anthony Froude, Historian of "the 

* Twenty works by Miss Yonge are in the Tauchnitz Col- 
lection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 4OI 

Reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth," and Edward 
Augustus Freeman* were at the beginning of the 
reign nineteen and fourteen years old. Mr. Froude's 
History, in twelve volumes (1856-69) was followed, in 
1872-74, by three volumes on "the English in Ireland 
in the i8th Century." The most important of many 
accurate and thorough books by Mr. E. A. Freeman is 
his "History of the Norman Conquest of England," in 
five volumes (1867-79). ^^ ^^s published also, in 
1 88 1, a "Historical Geography of Europe." To the 
best historical Literature of the Reign belongs also 
the series of Avorks in which Professor Samuel Rawson 
Gardiner has studied the reigns of the two earlier 
Stuart kings of England. Henry Thomas Buckle, Mat- 
thew Arnold, David Masson and Henry Morley were 
all, at the beginning of the reign, fifteen. Henry Tho- 
mas Buckle died in 1862, having produced in 1858 
and 1 86 1 two volumes introductory to a projected 
"History of Civilization" in Europe. Buckle's view 
of History was the reverse of Carlyle's, for he ascribed 
no influence to the independent force of character, 
and pleasantly startled readers by extravagant state- 
ment of the half truth that all events depend on the 
action of inevitable law. He said also that the moral 
element was of less consequence than the intellectual 
in a History of Civilization, because moral principles 
are the same as they were a thousand years ago, and 
all the progress has been intellectual. Steam also is 

* Freeman's *• Growth of the English Constitution'' and 
"Select Essays" are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 

0/ English Liierature. 26 



402 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

what it was a thousand years ago; and mtellect has 
developed the steam-engine. But where lies the 
motive power to which every ingenious detail has been 
made subordinate? Matthew Arnold, son of Dr. Arnold 
of Rugby, has written some of the most refined verse 
of our day, and taken a chief place among the critics. 
He has aided the advance of education, and touched 
questions of religion. The chief work of David Masson, 
Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the 
University of Edinburgh, is his Life of Milton, told in 
connexion with the History of his Time, in six volumes, 
begun in 1859 ^^^^ finished in 1880. It is a store- 
house of information, laboriously sought, carefully 
weighed. A seventh volume will consist wholly of 
Index. George Macdonald and William Wilkie Col- 
lins*, two living novelists of high mark, and George 
Macdonald, poet also, were boys of thirteen at the be- 
ginning of the reign. Sydney Dobell, who gave much 
promise as a poet and died in 1874, was also thirteen. 
Wilkie Collins's "Woman in White," published in i860, 
remains, perhaps, the most famous example of that 
skill in the construction of a peculiar form of plot 
which excited, at last, the emulation of Charles Dickens, 
who was in "Edwin Drood" a follower of his friend 
Wilkie Collins. Among living men of science, John 
Tyndall was aged seventeen, and Thomas Henry Huxley 
twelve. Edward Hayes Plumptre, divine and poet, now 
Dean of Wells, was nineteen. William Hepworth Dixon, 

* The novels of George Macdonald are in 18 volumes and 
those of Wilkie Collins in 39 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 403 

who died in December 1879, after an active literary life 
during part of which he edited "the Athenaeum," was 
sixteen.* Philip James Bailey, who published in 1839 
the remarkable poem of "Festus," was twenty-one at 
the beginning of the reign. John Westland Marston, 
a dramatic poet who has produced several good plays 
on the stage, was seventeen, and John Orchard Halli- 
well -Phillips, one of our ablest and most patient 
students of Shakespeare, was seventeen. Charles 
Kingsley and "George Eliot" were eighteen. 

Charles Kingsley was born in 1 8 1 9 in the vicarage 
of Holne on the border of Dartmoor. After being at 
school in Clifton and Helston, he was sent to King's 
College, London, and went thence, in 1838, to Magda- 
lene College, Cambridge. He graduated with high 
honours, took a curacy at Eversley in Hampshire, where 
in 1844 he became rector. In that year he married. 
In 1847 he first made his genius known by publishing 
a dramatic poem, "the Saint's Tragedy," upon the story 
of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. In 1848 he was stirred 
deeply by the events of the new Revolution in France. 
There was a menacing Chartist movement in Eng- 
land, and Kingsley, joining himself with F. D. Maurice 
whose books had strongly influenced his mind, laboured 
to put Christian life into the masses, while showing 
sympathy with their best hopes and knowledge of the 
evils that then cried for remedy. Kingsley's "Alton 
Locke," in 1850, and his "Yeast," in 185 1, represented 

* Works of W. Hepworth Dixon are in 23 volumes of the 
Tauchnitz Collection. 

26* 



404 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the Stir of the time, and showed what it meant in the 
long struggle towards a better life on earth. Other 
novels and poems followed: "Westward ho!" in 1855; 
"Two Years Ago," in 1857; "Andromeda, and other 
Poems," in 1858. "The Water Babies, a Fairy Tale 
for a Land Baby," in 1863; "Hereward the Wake," in 
1866. There were books also that helped to diffuse 
his love of nature, as " Glaucus, or the Wonders of the 
Shore," in 1857; with writings upon social history and 
volumes of sermons. In 1859 Charles Kingsley was 
appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Cam- 
bridge, and also Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. 
In 1869 he obtained a Canonry in Chester. In 1873 
he became Canon of Westminster. In January 1875 
he died.* A fitting biography was published by the 
companion of all his thoughts, his widow, in 1879. 

"George Eliot" was the name taken by a novelist 
of rare genius whose maiden-name was Mary Ann 
Evans. She was born in November 1 8 1 9 at Griff near 
Nuneaton in Warwickshire, where her father was land 
agent and surveyor to several estates. When she was 
about fifteen, her mother died, and she was youngest 
daughter in the house. She went to a school at 
Nuneaton, and removed with her father, in 1 841, to 
Foleshill near Coventry. The elder children then were 
all married, and at Foleshill she was alone with her 
father, from whom she took some features for her 
Caleb Garth in "Middlemarch." The head master of 

* Novels by Charles Kingsley are in 12 volumes of the 
Tauchnitz Collection, 



L\ TJrlE REIGN Ul'" ViCTORlA. 4O5 

the Coventry Grammar School gave Miss Evans lessons 
in Greek and Latin. She taught herself Hebrew; learnt 
French, German and Italian from another master; and 
music, in which she took intense delight, from the 
organist of St. Michael's church at Coventry. Her 
chief friends at Coventry were a gentleman and his 
wife, of high intellectual and personal character, who 
both wrote useful books, and in whose house she found 
the intellectual society she needed. But her friends 
had put aside the Christianity to which at Nuneaton 
she had been strongly attached. The society at the 
house of her friends was intellectual and sceptical. 
Another friend was found, whose influence was yet 
stronger in the same direction. Taking up the un- 
finished work of a daughter of her new friend's, Mary 
Ann Evans completed a translation of Strauss's "Leben 
Jesu," which was published in 1846. Such work 
brought her at times to London and into the society 
of thinkers like those whom she had learned to re- 
spect at Coventry. Li 1849 her father died, and she 
left Foleshill. Her home then was with her Coventry 
friends till 1851. She then removed to London, to 
assist Mr. John Chapman in editing a new series of 
"the Westminster Review." This brought her next 
into relation with George Henry Lewes. 

George Henry Lewes, born in 18 17, had begun the 
world as clerk in the house of a Russian merchant. 
He had an active, eager intellect with equal appetite 
for Literature and Science, but none for the counting- 
house. He left business; studied in Germany for a 



406 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

year or two; and then began to write, producing many- 
books and contributing to many journals. He wrote 
"a Biographical History of Philosophy," of which there 
was an enlarged fourth edition in 187 1. In 1846 he 
wrote two novels, "Ranthorpe"*" and "Rose Blanche 
and Violet," in 1847 ^^^ 1848, a Tragedy, "the Noble 
Heart," which was acted at Manchester in 1848, "a Life 
of Robespierre" in 1849. ^^ was enthusiastic for the 
Positivism of Auguste Comte, and published a book on 
"Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences," in 1853. The 
Philosophy of Comte has also strong supporters in 
a few able and earnest English thinkers, subject to 
impulse originally received from some enthusiastic 
students of Wadham College, Oxford, who have carried 
out their ideal in afterlife. Its aim is generous and 
just. It is, indeed, little more than the French crystal- 
lization into a single and harmonious theory of the 
main thought of our time, that only by the fidelity of 
each one to the highest sense of duty we advance 
Humanity. To most people this is a part of religion; 
to Comte it was the clear and perfect whole, expressed 
in formulas, and shaped into a science, of which the 
worst enemy can only say that it is a truth but not 
the whole truth, and a truth that, rightly acted on, 
can only work for the well-being of the world. 

What was fascinating in this doctrine, Miss Evans 
felt. She joined her life to that of Mr. Lewes by a faith- 

* G. H. Lewes's " Ranthorpe, " his "Physiology of Common 
Life" and his volume "On Actors and the Art of Acting" are in 
the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN TIIE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 407 

ful bond, though there were reasons why it could not 
have "the social sanction." In 1856 the first work of 
" George Eliot" — "Scenes of Clerical Life " — was offered 
to "Blackwood's Magazine," and the first of the three 
stories, "Amos Barton," began to appear in 1857. 
In January 1859 "Adam Bede" was published, and 
"George Eliot" took her place in the front rank of 
English novelists. "The Mill on the Floss" followed 
in i860; "Silas Marner," in 1861; "Romola," in 1863; 
"Felix Holt," in 1866; "The Spanish Gipsy," a poem, 
in 1868; "Middlemarch," in 1872, "Daniel Deronda," 
in 1877, and in 1879, "Impressions of Theophrastus 
Such."* Mr. Lewes had founded in 1865 the "Fort- 
nightly Review" — afterwards made monthly, without 
change of name — for the purpose of bringing within 
one journal both sides of the discussion of all matters 
that concerned the general well-being. The conception 
was a noble one. It was followed by the establishment, 
in 1866, of the "Contemporary Review," with like 
purpose but with a religious bias, as in "the Fort- 
nightly" the bias would be Positivist. These were 
followed yet again by another monthly, in 1877, "the 
Nineteenth Century," which vigorously labours also to 
bring the best minds of all forms of thought into 
council with the public. In May 1879 Mr. Lewes died. 
In May 1880 George Eliot was married to an old and 
devoted friend, Mr. John Walter Cross. On the 2 2d of 
the following December she died after a short illness. 

* Novels of "George Eliot" are in 17 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 



408 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

George Eliot's novels are admirably various in 
their scenery. They now paint Methodist life in the 
days of Wesley, now Mediaeval Catholicism in the 
days of Savonarola, now the whole range of the Jewish 
nationality. They are alike in their rich play of 
humour and pathos, in sympathy with the varieties of 
human character, in the spirit of humanity that is allied 
with every honest aspiration; they are alike also in the 
steadiness with which every one exalts the life that is 
firmly devoted to the highest aim it knows. Again 
and again, there is the type of the weak pleasure-lov- 
ing mind, too easily misled, and of the firm spirit, 
capable of self-denial, true to its own highest sense 
of right. George Eliot's novels will cloud no true 
faith; they are the work of a woman of rare genius 
whose place is, for all time, among the greatest 
novelists our country has produced. 

John Ruskin, who was born in 1819, and began 
his teaching when he published his "Modern Painters," 
in 1843-46, has in all his writings used his genius as 
faithfully. Beginning with the warning to painters, 
that they should show truly the forms of clouds, and 
trees, and mountain ranges, he enlarged his teaching 
from the first by application of it to sincerity of life. 
Where he seems least reasonable, what we call his 
unreason comes only of the firm upholding of a single 
thought. One truth in Art and Life, — for Art like 
Literature, is but the speaking breath of life, — one great 
truth, is enough for one man to uphold. "We are 
not sent into this world," says Ruskin, "to do anything 



iN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 409 

into which we cannot put our hearts . . . There is 
dreaming enough, and earthiness enough, and sen- 
suality enough in human existence without our turning 
the few glowing moments of it into mechanism; and 
since our life must at the best be but a vapour that 
appears for a little time and then vanishes away, let 
it at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, 
not as the thick darkness that broods over the blast 
of the Furnace, and rolling of the Wheel." That 
thought is none the less true for a dozen errors in the 
application of it. 

There was a like sense of life in Mrs. Browning's 
"Cry of the Children." The first book of poems to 
which that true poetess set her name, "the Seraphim," 
represented voices of the angels as they looked at 
Him who yet hung dying on the Cross at Calvary. 
Out of the depths of Christianity came her plea for 
the higher life of man. Her call for union of the 
thinker with the worker, the idealist with the man 
eager to provide for each day's bitter need, gave to 
her poem of "Aurora Leigh," published in 1857, ^ ^^i^^ 
blending with the thoughtful music of her husband. 
Robert Browning in his "Paracelsus" showed the 
failure of one who desired at a bound to reach the 
far ideal; in "Sordello," showed the poet before Dante, 
seeking his true place in life, and finding it only 
when he became leader of men in the real battle of 
life, and poet all the more. If there be no full civiliza- 
tion to be w^on on earth by those who shall come after 
us in distant years, yet we must labour on, not dream- 



4Ip OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ing, but doing. And to the poet we must go for 
utterances of the soul of action; for no true poet is 
"an idle singer," and no day "an empty day."^ 

Let us not wrest unduly from their sense these 
words of Mr. William Morris in the prelude to his 
"Earthly Paradise." Mr. William Morris's poems have 
their own great charm, but have not yet the greatest. 
Mr. William Morris was three years old at the be- 
ginning of the reign, and he has yet to set the crown 
to his career among the poets. Nor let us leave 
unnamed the witty novels of George Meredith,** the 
womanly novels of Mrs. Craik,** the pleasant songs 
of William Allingham, and the verse music of Jean 
Ingelow,*** who were all children in 1837. 

Thomas Hughes, aged fourteen at the beginning 
of the reign, was a boy under Dr. Arnold at Rugby, 
and has since helped to quicken a new generation 
with the spirit of his teacher, in the most popular of 
his books, "Tom Brown's School-days" first published 
in 1856.1 It was followed, in 1861, by "Tom Brown 
at Oxford." 

Among novelists who are now active and whose 
works are widely enjoyed, Mrs. Henry Wood was of 

* The Poetical works of Robert Browning, Mrs. Browning's 
"Aurora Leigh" and a Selection from her Poetry, are in the 
Tauchnitz Collection. 

** George Meredith's "Ordeal ofFeverel" and "Beauchamp's 
Career," and the works of Mrs. Craik (Miss Mulock) in 38 volumes 
are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 

*** Nine volumes by Jean Ingelow ai-e in' the Tauchnitz Col- 
lection. 

t "Tom Brown's School-days" is in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE RETGN OF VICTORIA. 4 II 

the same age as "George Eliot" and Mrs. Eliza Lynn 
Linton, daughter of the Vicar of Crosthwaite , in 
Cumberland, was fifteen, at the beginning of the 
reign. Of the same age was Miss Frances Power 
Cobbe, who has been an energetic and imaginative 
writer upon social questions.* In fiction, indeed, the 
Literature of our day has received large contributions 
from the lively fancies, quick sympathies, and shrewd 
observation of character, among English women. It 
is doubtful whether the general reader, who is en- 
couraged even by many erudite writers to treat 
Christian names as of no consequence, will ever 
distinguish clearly between Miss Amelia Blandford 
Edwards, born in 1831, daughter of a Peninsular 
officer, and Miss. Matilda Barbara Betham-Edwards, 
born in 1836, whose "Kitty," when it first appeared. 
Lord Houghton enthusiastically praised as "the best 
novel he had ever read." These excellent writers 
really do live separate lives, each has a distinct style 
of her own, and they are not the Mrs. Edwardes, who 
is also well known as a novelist. The Baroness Taut- 
phoeus, who also writes good novels, is fairly safe from 
the risk of a confusion of this kind.** 



* The Novels of Mrs. Henry Wood are in 58 volumes, and 
those of Mrs. Linton in 13 volumes of the Tauchnitz Collection, 
which also contains Miss Cobbe's "Re-echoes." 

** Works of Miss Amelia B. Edwards, in 20 volumes; of 
Miss M. Betham-Edwards in 6 volumes, and of Mrs. Edwardes 
in 12 volumes are in the Tauchnitz Collection; also "Cyrilla," 
"the Initials," "Quits," and "At Odds" by the Baroness Taut- 
phoeus. 



412 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Lady Georgiana Fullerton, second daughter of the 
first Earl Granville, has also written with refinement; 
and Miss Harriet Parr (Holme Lee), who published her 
first novel in 1855. Miss Georgiana Craik began to 
write novels in 1859; ^^^^ ^^ have biography as well 
as fiction fi-om Miss Julia Kavanagh, who was born in 
1824 and died in 1877. Mrs. Oliphant has been 
already mentioned, on page 309, as one of our novelists 
of finer strain. Miss Mary Elizabeth Braddon achieved 
her first success with "Lady Audley's Secret" in 1862; 
"Ouida" with "Strathmore" in 1865. Miss Rhoda 
Broughton began to write novels in 1867, and Miss 
Florence Montgomery in 1870.* 

Giovanni Domenico Ruffini, born in Genoa in 1807, 
made England for some time his home, and enriched 
the literature of our time, in 1852, with an admirable 
book, "Lorenzo Benoni," which was followed by other 
stories. ■^■'^ Dante Gabriel Rossetti, son of a distin- 
guished commentator upon Dante, was born in London 
in 1828; his brother, William Michael Rossetti, in 
1829; his sister, Christina Georgina Rossetti, in 1830. 
Dante Rossetti is poet and painter:*** his brother is 



* The Tauchnitz Collection includes novels by Lady Geor- 
giana Fullerton in 2 1 volumes ; by Miss Georgiana Craik in 
18 volumes; by Miss Harriet Parr in 16 volumes; by Miss Kavanagh 
in 35 volumes; by Miss Braddon in 64 volumes; by "Ouida" in 
36 volumes; by Miss Rhoda Broughton in 12 volumes, and by 
Miss Florence Montgomery in 9 volumes. 

** Mr. Ruffini's Novels are in 9 volumes of the Tauchnitz 
Collection. 

*** Poems by D. G. Rossetti are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 4 1 3 

an active critic of poetry and art; his sister Christina 
is a poetess of no slight mark. 

George John Whyte-Melville, who was born in 
182 1, and died in 1878, began his successful career 
as a novelist, in 1853, with "Tilbury Nogo, Passages 
in the Life of an Unsuccessful Man." Mr. Whyte- 
Melville was Captain in the Coldstream Guards when 
he retired from the army in 1849. 

Richard Doddridge Blackmore, son of a clergyman 
in Berkshire, graduated at Oxford in 1847, was called 
to the bar at the Middle Temple, and practised as a 
conveyancer before publishing his first novel, in 1864. 

William Black, sixteen years younger, was born at 
Glasgow in 1841, and came to London as a journalist 
in 1864. He was special correspondent of a London 
daily paper at the seat of war, in 1866, and published 
his first novel in 1867. In 1871 he attained a great 
success with his "Daughter of Heth," and since that 
time he has maintained his place among the best of 
living English novelists. The characters of journalist 
and novelist are joined also in elder men, in two who 
have both worked under Charles Dickens, and been 
counted among his friends, the lively and energetic 
George Augustus Sala, who is essayist and novelist; 
and Edmund Yates, who looks also at life and litera- 
ture as novelist and journalist. 

Among the novelists there are to be remembered 
also Hamilton Aide, James Payn, and Thomas Hardy. 
Justin MacCarthy, born at Cork in 1830, has not only 
won honours in fiction. He completed in 1880 a 



414 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

"History of Our Own Times/' in four volumes, which, 
has already gone through many editions.* 

With all this thought for present amusement there 
has been throughout the reign a steady increase of 
attention to the past. Societies have been formed for 
the reprint and study of our Early Literature, and in 
this way no man has done more faithful and energetic 
service than Frederick James Furnivall. Professor 
Edward Arber, of Birmingham, not through Societies, 
but by his single personal devotion to the work, as at 
once Editor and Publisher, has diffused 140,000 copies 
of cheap editions of rare pieces of old English Literature. 
Professor Alfred J. Church has told afresh the stories of 
Herodotus, Homer, the Greek Dramatists, and Vergil, in 
books equally delightful to the scholar and the child. 

And there still lives in the England of Victoria the 
spirit that made Elizabeth's England dear to Richard 
Hakluyt. The loss of Sir John Franklin, in 1 845, with 
all record of Search Expeditions down to Mac Clintock's 
"Voyage of 'the Fox,'" published in 1859; ^^^ Journals 
of David Livingstone, and records of those explorations 
to which he gave up his life in central Africa; have 
added volumes of deep interest to represent the Life 
of England in the Literature of the present reign. 

Of the writers now strongly representing English 

* The Tauchnitz Collection includes, novels of Whyte- Mel- 
ville in 32 volumes; of James Payn in 35 volumes; of Edmund 
Yates in 27 volumes ; of William Black in 24 volumes ; of Hamilton 
Aide in 12 volumes ; of Thomas Hardy in 8 volumes ; G. A. Sala's 
"Seven Sons of Mammon," 6 volumes of Justin MacCarthy's 
Novels and, in 5 volumes, his "History of Our Own Times." 



IN THE REIGN OF VICTORIA. 415 

Literature who are true Victorians, John Morley, born 
in 1838, who has written faithful studies of the literary- 
movements that preceded the French Revolution, and 
has just written a thoughtful and honest "Ivife of 
Richard Cobden;" William Edward Hartpole Lecky, 
born also in 1838, who published in 1865 his "History 
of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe," in 1869 a 
''History of European Morals from Augustus to Charle- 
magne," and in 1878 a "History of England in the 
Eighteenth Century," maintain the spirit of historical 
research, and faithfully apply their studies to the life 
of their own day. Archibald Forbes, born also in 1838, 
represents the skill and courage of the modern News- 
paper Correspondent."^ Algernon Charles Swinburne 
has long since taken his place among the poets. 
There will be no want of faithful work as the genera- 
tions follow one another. The author of "the Epic of 
Hades" will sing other songs as pure as those by 
which he earned his fame, and rising with the years 
in power. Even while these lines are written, a 
poem in "the Nineteenth Century," called "Despair; 
a Dramatic Monologue," bears witness to the abiding 
vigour of our Laureate, the history of whose work cover 
the history of half a century, dating from the volume 
of "Poems; chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson," first 
published in 1830. Tennyson's verse** has shown 

* The "War Correspondence" and other writings of Archi- 
bald Forbes are in 6 vohimes of the Tauchnitz Collection, 

** Tennyson's "Poems" in 9 volumes, and his plays, "Queen 
Mary" and "Harold," are in the Tauchnitz Collection. 



41 6 OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

the way from death to life through the sustained 
song of immortality, his "In Memoriam;" has once 
more spiritualized our national romance hero, and 
associated tales of Arthur with the king within the 
human breast. Among poets of the Reign of Victoria 
he too has worn his laurel as a "blameless king," 



THE END. 



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